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PROPHECY 



VIEWED IN EESPECT TO ITS 



DISTINCTIVE NATURE, SPECIAL FUNCTION, 
AND PROPER INTERPRETATION. 



By PATRICK FAIEBAIRK D.D., 

PBINOtPAL OF THE FBEU CHURCH COLLEGB, GLASGOW; 
ATJTHOB OP " TYPOLOGY OF 6CRIPTUEE,» " BZEEIEL AND THE BOOK OP HIS PEOPHECY," ETC. 



>»• 



eto g0rh: 

PUBLISHED BY CARLTON & PORTER, 

200 MULBEKRY-8TKKET. 
1866. 






1 






PREFACE TO THE EDINBURGH EDITION. 



-♦♦♦«■ 



One of tlie main considerations which induced me, a few 
years ago, to prepare and issue the following treatise on 
Prophecy, arose from the effect which was being produced 
by the general tendency of theological discussion on the evi- 
dential value of prophecy, as that was wont to be presented. 
The same reason exists still, if not in increased, at least in un- 
diminished force ; and I therefore substantially repeat what I 
then stated on this preliminary point. The whole of that de- 
partment of theology, I remarked, which treats of the evi- 
dences of revealed religion, has been peculiarly affected by the 
spirit of the age ; and a mode of treatment is now required for 
the several topics it embraces, which materially differs from 
what was usually adopted and deemed sufficient so lately as 
the earlier part of the present century. Such is more particu- 
larly the case in respect to the subject of prophecy. The 
claim of the Bible to divine authority, on the ground of its 
predictions, has now to be maintained from a more internal 
position than formerly ; since objections are laid by the oppo- 
nents or corrupters of the truth against the argument from 
prophecy less on the ground of an alleged weakness in the 
argument itself, abstractly considered, than by attempting 
to eliminate the predictive element from Scripture in so far 
as it can be said to carry with it any argumentative value. 
Adopt their mode of contemplating the prophetical writings, 
and you no longer possess the materials necessary for con- 
structing an argument that will serve the cause of Chris- 
tianity. Cotemporaneously, too, with this relative change on 



4: PREFACE TO THE EDINBURGH EDITION. 

the part of the impugners of a supernatural revelation, modes 
of interpretation, and theories of providential change founded 
on them, have been gaining currency among many students of 
prophetical Scripture, which, if valid, would deprive the argu- 
ment from prophecy of some of its most important defenses. 
The immediate result of the two tendencies combined has been 
to involve the subject of prophecy in a medley of confusion, 
and in great measure to antiquate, even for argumentative 
purposes, the works which have been framed with an express 
view to the exhibition of the evidence deducible from it. In a 
higher respect, however, this state of things is scarcely to be 
regretted ; since it necessarily forces on the advocates of reve- 
lation a more fundamental investigation of the whole subject, 
and cannot fail ultimately to lead to the establishment of more 
correct views respecting the proper function and essential char- 
acteristics of prophecy. It is here, more especially, that our 
theological literature in this department needs fresh considera- 
tion and admits of improvement. 

Of the two disturbing elements referred to in this statement, 
that to my mind is by much the most serious and embarrass- 
ing which arises from the conflicting views, and, one may say, 
the antagonistic schools of interpretation, which have come to 
prevail among sincere and earnest students themselves of the 
prophetic word. Were there but an intelligent understanding 
and general concurrence among them respecting the great prin- 
ciples applicable to the subject, less concern might be felt for 
the hostile criticism of open or disguised opponents, and some 
reasonable prospect might be entertained of their differences 
on subordinate points giving way. It is on this account, and 
as expressive of this conviction, that so large a portion of the 
ensuing volume has been devoted to the investigation of prin- 
ciples ; since no otherwise than by a correct knowledge of these, 
gathered from a full and careful comparison of Scripture, can a 
satisfactory foundation be laid, or a general agreement be ar- 
rived at by believing theologians as to the right use and inter- 
pretation of prophecy. It has been my aim, however, in that 
part of the volume which treats of what is more fundamental, 
to relieve the discussion by introducing as many illustrations 



PREFACE TO THE EDINBURGH EDITION. 5 

as possible of particular prophecies, so as, while chiefly occu- 
pied in laying the foundation, to make some progress also in 
raising the superstructure. In the latter half, which has for its 
specific object fulfillments of prophecy, prospective as well as 
accomplished, I have endeavored to conduct the inquiry strictly 
with a view to the application of the principles established in 
the earlier part, going as far as I felt these could safely carry 
me, but no farther. It is possible, that some who concur with 
me in regard to the principles of the subject may not always 
go along with me in their specific application; and many, 
doubtless, will be disposed to complain that the applications to 
specific objects and events in the future are not by any means 
so numerous and circumstantial as they conceive they should 
have been. All I can say is, " I have done what I could ; " 
and before much fault is found on the latter score, it might be 
well to consider seriously the position into which the subject of 
prophecy has been brought by that more pretentious and his- 
torical style of interpretation which is throughout opposed in 
this volume as inconsistent with the proper function and char- 
acter of prophecy. It is impossible for any sober-minded and 
thoughtful Christian to reflect without grief, if he has intelli- 
gence enough to know, how largely with the advocates of that 
other style the spirit of soothsaying has of late entered into the 
study of prophecy in this country ; and how often the credit of 
Holy Scripture has been " put at pawn in the hands of infidel- 
ity," not to be redeemed, but to be shamefully lost. The 
skeptical spirit of the age might, if it chose, reap a plentiful 
harvest in this field to help on its popular crusade against the 
credibility and worth of Scripture ; and if the faith of many 
within the enchanted circle has not been seriously shaken by 
the cycles of expectation and disappointment through which 
they have passed, it can only be accounted for by some peculiar 
idiosyncrasy in the mental constitution and habits of its possess- 
ors. Mr. Frere, who has more perhaps than any other acted 
as the leader in this mistaken and perilous line of things, has 
lived to see his most confidently-announced prognostications of 
great events thrice over palpably falsified. Even since the 
first edition of this volume was published, a whole series of an- 



6 PREFACE TO THE EDINBURGH EDITION. 

nouncements from the sure word of prophecy, issued, not by 
one merely, but by a number of disciples of the same school, 
have shared a like fate. Holding, as they do in common, and 
without any valid ground in Scripture, that the present Louis 
Xapoleon is the last, the culminating embodiment of the anti- 
christ — ^holding it, indeed, so firmly that it has ceased to be 
with them a matter of doubt, " having been demonstrated with 
mathematical certainty" — there should have been formed a 
seven-years' compact between the emperor and the Jews at the 
latest in 1861, (the period of the Second Advent being assigned 
to between 1866 and 1868 ;) the Jews should have been already 
back to Palestine, and their new temple in progress, since this 
was to be completed in 1865 ; Popery as a system should have 
been destroyed in this current year of 1864, or, as it is other- 
wise and more particularly expressed, " the mystery of iniquity 
should now have been finishing in bloodshed so great, that the 
apostle uses a hyperbole to describe it, reaching unto the horses^ 
tridlesy All these, and other things of a like nature, were a 
few years ago confidently predicted, while not one of them has 
had even the shadow of a fulfillment ; and in so far as such in- 
terpreters of prophecy could do it, the cause of Bible truth has 
been delivered up into the enemies' hands. ISTor is it the least 
melancholy part of the matter, that they appear to be them- 
selves no way daunted by the results ; and, as if the ground 
still remained firm beneath their feet, the same things are re- 
asserted with unabated confidence, only, by a fresh manipula- 
tion of figures and symbols, the period is postponed some eight 
or ten years later : the consummation now is to be, not in 
1866-8, but 1871-2. (See, for example, Baxter's " Louis Na- 
poleon," ed. 1863.) 

Surely the knowledge of such things should arouse clergy- 
men, and biblical students generally, to a more profound and 
impartial examination of the structure and import of the pro- 
phetic word. The more so, as many of the persons, who have 
been carried away by this false spirit of interpretation, are not 
mere ignorant enthusiasts, but belong in considerable numbers 
to the respectable and educated classes of society. ITot a few 
even fill responsible positions in the Church. And what makes 



PEEFACE TO THE EDINBURGH EDITION". 7 

the matter more serious, calling for earnest consideration 
among a much wider circle, is the circumstance — ^which no one 
who has much acquaintance with the literature of the subject 
can well doubt — that it is the partial support which this mode 
of dealing with prophecy has obtained, and still obtains, from 
some men of note as interpreters of Scripture, that mainly fos- 
ters and sustains it. The principles on which these castles in 
the air are built, with at least occasional applications of them, 
are to be found in some of our most extensively read works in 
scriptural exposition and discourse; and never till the right 
principles of prophetical interpretation are more thorough^ 
understood and consistently applied, may we expect to see the 
soothsaying tendency checked, which c6mpels Scripture to min- 
ister to its craving for a degree and kind of information respect- 
ing the future which it was never intended to yield. 

The proper place of the prophetic word lies between the two 
extremes which rationalism and enthusiasm would thus respect- 
ively claim for it ; and to vindicate for it, on grounds of Scrip- 
ture and reason, that intermediate place, is the service that is 
now most especially required in its behalf. On the one side, 
it must be held and shown that this word was given by inspira- 
tion of God — ^not in the general sense alone, in which good 
thoughts and safe counsels may be said to be so given, but as 
supernatural and direct communications from above. For the 
prophets were not simply men of religious genius ; they were 
divinely gifted seers who could descry the truth of the future ; 
and could delineate it, not in the abstract merely, but in con- 
crete forms and distinctive features, such as would carry an 
easily perceived correspondence with the events that were des- 
tined to realize them. On the other side, however, " the pro- 
phets were not soothsayers ; they do not predict future events 
simply as such, without regard to God and his kingdom. To 
look into the very nature of God, to behold in his light the 
laws of eternity, according to which he governs the Church and 
the world, is something infinitely higher than a mere knowledge 
of the future, which is itself a matter of indifference." (Heng- 
stenberg.) Hence, prophecy is utterly misapplied when it is 
taken as a guide-book to details happening in the civil and 



8 PREFACE TO THE EDINBURGH EDITION. 

political sphere of the world's history, as if it were intended 
to afford to those who study it an insight into the plots and 
movements of earthly kingdoms, to discover to them remote 
changes in constitutional governments, or to indicate steps of 
advancement in material progress. Prophecy moves in a 
higher sphere, and but incidentally, as well as sparingly, 
touches on worldly states. 

It is in the hope of contributing to the right interpretation 
and use of prophecy that I again commit the following treatise 
to the public, with only such alterations as seem needful to 
adapt it better to its purpose. Writing more especially for 
those who wish to study the subject in its essential features, 
and as connected with the true knowledge of Scripture, it has 
formed no part of my plan to give a complete history of 
opinion on the topics successively handled, or to recount at 
length the views of particular writers. I have aimed at giving 
the treatise rather an exegetical and positive than a negative 
and controversial aspect ; and have been at more pains in un- 
folding what I conceive to be the truth, than in noticing every 
shadfe and variety of error that may have arisen against it. 
All the leading forms and phases of opinion, of course, are 
indicated on such points as are of more vital moment to the 
main theme ; and where necessary for purposes of argiunent or 
illustration, references are also made to individual authors. 
But, very frequently, where views are referred to at variance 
with those which have commended themselves to my own mind, 
I have abstained from mentioning particular names, that the 
discussion might not be entangled more than was necessary 
with personal allusions. In several cases also I have, in this 
new edition, softened the language in those parts which are 
unavoidably controversial, seeking as little as possible to irri- 
tate the feelings of others, while obliged to oppose their senti- 
ments. 

The greater proportion of the changes introduced into this 
edition are, like the one just specified, of the nature of subor- 
dinate improvements. A few incidental corrections also have 
been made, and occasional additions inserted. The greatest 
alteration is in chapter iv of Part I, where the question is dis- 



PEEFACE TO THE EDINBUKGH EDITION. 9 

cussed, how far prophecy is to be regarded as absolute or con- 
ditional in its announcements — a subject unquestionably of 
considerable difficulty, and on wbicb the language used in the 
previous edition was in some quarters misunderstood, perhaps 
was somewhat less guarded and explicit than it should have 
been. In the present edition I have both given a more distinct 
statement of the question at issue, and have unfolded what I 
take to be the right solution of it in a manner which, whether 
deemed satisfactory or not as regards the point more imme- 
diately in hand, cannot, in a doctrinal respect, be excepted 
against. Some controversial matter bearing on the subject I 
have thrown into an Appendix. 

i On the general subject of prophecy there have been few pub- 
lications of importance, so far as my knowledge goes, since the 
appearance of the first edition of this treatise. In Hengsten- 
berg's " Christology," second edition, there is an Appendix on 
the '' i^ature of Prophecy," which may be referred to as in the 
main confirming the views unfolded here ; and several other 
dissertations in the closing part of that volume, relating espe- 
cially to the Messianic prophecies in the Old Testament, and 
the history of their interpretation, will well repay perusal. 
From Germany we have also a treatise by Tholuck, (Die Pro- 
pheten imd ihre Weissagungen, I860,) which contains many 
excellent and just remarks on the nature of prophecy, and vin- 
dicates the strictly supernatural as well as truthful character 
of its communications against the attacks of recent assailants. 
It is somewhat brief, however, on leading points, and is decid- 
edly better on specific predictions and objections of opponents 
than in respect to fundamental principles. The Warburtonian 
Lectures of Dean Goode, delivered in 1854-58, but published 
only in 1863, abstain altogether from the investigation of prin- 
ciples, and are wholly occupied with the consideration of pre- 
dictions on particular subjects and their fulfillment. They can 
scarcely be said to meet the demands of such a critical age as 
the present, and though replete with good sense and just ob- 
servations, they bring no fresh contribution to the objects we 
have here more particularly in view. The recent Lectures on 
Daniel by Dr. Pusey are entitled to be mentioned as contain- 



10 PREFACE TO THE EDIKBUEGH EDITION. 

ing an able and learned vindication of the genuineness and 
authenticity of a much assailed portion of the prophetic writ- 
ings ; but from their apologetic aim, they have to do chiefly 
with the inspired character of the book, and only as subsidiary 
to this treat of its contents or of prophecy in general. In cer- 
tain parts the author's theological position appears to some 
extent to bias his judgment, and to dispose him (especially in 
respect to the antichrist) to seek for a species of fulfillment 
which prophecy, I am convinced, when consistently interpreted, 
does not warrant. But in what may be regarded as his more 
direct object, the volume forms a seasonable and important 
contribution. 

In many points, which respect the prophetical future, uni- » 
formity of opinion can only be expected to be the growth of 
time ; and for what is here written upon them I ask nothing 
more than an impartial and patient consideration. 

P. F. 

Glasgow, October, 1864. 



INTRODUCTION TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. 



The author of the following work is very favorably known 
to biblical and theological thinkers in this country by his 
" Hermeneutical Manual," published by Smith and English, 
Philadelphia, and by his '' Scripture Typology," published by 
Carter and Brothers, 'New York. The former is a collection 
of monographs in biblical criticism, connected with the author's 
general system of biblical interpretation, profoundly reverent 
in spirit, independent in its style of criticism, and evincing no 
ordinary power of thought. The latter work forms an era in 
the history of typological interpretation. The student of the 
sacred volume has ever been obliged to acknowledge that the 
TYPE has an actual and undeniable place in the system of reve- 
lation ; but so completely has it been the subject, alternately, 
of extravagant and imaginative interpretations on the one hand, 
and of very eifective skeptical sneers on the other, that he has, 
perhaps, been tempted in his wavering moments to be so far wise 
above what is written as to wish that the sacred volume had 
never been burdened with so doubtful an element. Dr. Fair- 
bairn has ascertained, with a searching analysis, the fundament- 
al idea upon which the type is based, and thence has deduced 
the regulative principles which, while giving a scientific exact- 
ness and certainty to the whole typical system, increase its 
apologetic force without in the least degree diminishing its 
symmetry and beauty. 

What he has so ably done with the visible prediction, the 
TYPE, he here proposes to accomplish with the spoken predic- 
tion, the prophecy. The same difficulties have embarrassed 
them both. From age to age unregulated imaginations have 
rioted in making special applications of prophetic predictions. 



12 INTKODUCTION TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. 

without regard to the general symmetry of the prophetic 
system, to characters and events which, however stupendous to 
the fancy of the cotemporaneous interpreter, possess no sig- 
nificance in history, and are wholly unentitled to the notice 
of prophecy. To check these luxuriant but barren and dan- 
gerous fancies by ascertaining the fundamental principles of 
prophecy, thence to delineate the structure of the grand whole, 
and finally to deduce the rules that regulate the special appli- 
cations, constitute the critical yet conservative object of this 
work. We find as the result that prophecy is a sublime por- 
traiture of the kingdom of God. It presents before our view 
an organic sujpernatural overlying the natural^ as the firma- 
ment overarches the earth. Thus, while those extravagances 
of fancy which threaten the very life of all prophecy are 
quietly allowed to disappear, the evidential value of inspired 
prediction stands in full force. 

The biblical and theological scholar who studies the Old 
Testament by the guidance of the principles developed both 
in the Typology and in the work before us, will thence derive 
a constant exposition of the dark sayings of the holy seers of 
old. A spontaneous light will shine upon many otherwise 
obscure places. He may discover, too, new self-confirmations 
in those holy old records, which the Spinozas and Colensoes can 
little disturb. They are found to possess a self-demonstrative 
element, supematurally evincing their authenticity, such as no 
mere human work can ever exhibit. Difiused through the 
whole sacred oracles is revealed the presence of a divine om- 
niscience which embalms and conserves them. And thus the 
word of God, like the kingdom of God, is seen to be a one 
organic indestructible whole ; and of each one it is equally 
true that TrvAat adov ov Kartaxvcovacv avrrjg. Matt, xvi, 18. 



CONTENTS. 



■^•^ 



PART I. 

Page 
Intestigation of Principles IT 

Chap. 
I. The proper calling of a prophet, and the essential nature of a prophecy. 19 
n. The place of prophecy in history, and the organic connection of the one 

with the other 33 

III. The proper sphere of prophecy — the Church 54 

TV. The relation of prophecy to men's responsibilities ; with a consideration 
of the question, how far prophecy is absolute or conditional in its 

announcements 10 

V. The prophetic style and diction 93 

Sect. 

I. Negatively : what is not the character of the prophetic style and 

diction 93 

n. The prophetic style and diction viewed positively — its more dis- 
tinctive peculiarities — the ground of those peculiarities in the 

mode of revelation by vision • 117 

m. First peculiarity of the style and diction of prophecy — poetical 

elevation 133 

IV. Second peculiarity of the prophetic style and diction — figurative 

representation 145 

V. Third peculiarity of the prophetic style and diction — the exhibition 
of events as present, or successive only in relation to each 

other, rather than as hnked to definite historical epgchs 176 

VI. The interconnected and progressive character of prophecy 186 



PART II. 

Application op Principles to Past and Prospective Fulfillments of 
Prophecy 205 

Chap. 

I. The apologetic value of prophecy, or its place and use as an evidence for 

the facts and doctrines of Scripture 205 



14 CONTENTS. 

Sbct. Paqk 
I. Prophecies on tlie states and kingdoms which came into contact 

with Israel 211 

II. Prophecies respecting the Jewish people 227 

ni. Prophecies respecting the Messiah 230 

IV. Prophecies respecting the destruction of Jerusalem 238 

11. The prophetical future of the Jemsh people 242 

III. The prophetical future of the Church and kingdom of Christ 286 

Sect, 

I. The Church and kingdom of Christ in their relation to the king- 
doms of the world 28*7 

§ 1. The prophecies in Daniel concerning Christ's kingdom 
in its relation to the kingdoms of the world, p. 290. § 2. Proph- 
ecies in the Apocalypse concerning it in the same relation, 
p. 305 ; the beast of the Apocalypse, with seven heads and ten 
horns, p. 307 ; the divine kingdom under the emblem of a Son 
of man, p. 311; and a woman, p. 316; the opposition of the 
dragon to this kingdom, p. 318 ; then of the beast after his 
deadly wound was healed, p, 323 ; finally of his ally, the lamb- 
homed beast or false prophet, p. 326. 

n. The prophetical future of the Church and kingdom of Christ in 
their relation to the character, working, and fate of the anti- 
ehristian apostasy 336 

§ 1, The antichrist as represented in Daniel, first typically, 
p, 33T ; then antitypically, p. 341. § 2, The antichrist as rep 
resented by our Lord and his apostles, p. 344. § 3, The anti- 
christ as represented in the Apocalypse, p, 364, § 4, The 
antichrist of the Apocalypse in regard to its overthrow and 
final doom, p, 380. 

m. Supplementary: containing an outline of the general plan of the 
Apocalypse, from cliap. v to the close of chap, xix, with refer- 
ence more especially to the distinctive character and relative 
order of the three great series of the seals, the trumpets, and 

the vials 393 

The seven-sealed book, p. 393; the different series of sym- 
bolic actions, whether synchronal or successive, p, 396; the 
seals considered individually, p. 398; the trumpets similarly 
coilsidered, p. 406; the vials in like manner, p. 418; the vis- 
ions in chap, xvii to xix, p. 425 ; the mystical numbers in the 
book, p. 426. 

rv. The prophetical future of the Church and kingdom of Christ in 
their relation to his second coming, and the closing issues of 
his mediatorial kingdom 432 

The doctrine of the Lord's coming, as exhibited generally in 
Scripture, p. 433 ; the millennial state as represented in Old 
Testament prophecy, p. 446 ; as represented in the Apocalypse, 
p. 450 ; the relation of the millennium to the Lord's final ad- 
vent, p. 464 ; the war of Gog and Magog, p. 472; manifesta- 
tion of Christ as judge, p. 478; the new heavens and the new 
earth, p, 479. 



CONTENTS. 15 



APPENDICES. 

Pagk. 

A. The original import of the word V^'^'2'2 (prophet,) and its later usage. . . 481 

B. Interpretation of Num. xii, 6-8, and the prophet like to Moses 483 

C. Prophetic agency apart from personal holiness 486 

D. Views of earlier reformed theologians on the conditional element in 

prophecy 489 

E. Symbolical designation of kingdoms as mountains 493 

P. Prophetical literaHsm essentially Jewish ^ . 495 

G. Interpretation of 2 Pet. i, 21 497 

H. The symbolic actions of the prophets 498 

I. St. Peter's discourses in Acts ii and iii 505 

K. Who are the saints that, in Daniel vii, 18-22, are said to possess the 

kingdom 510 

L. The tendency of prophecy to describe things according to the reality, 

rather than the appearance or profession 512 

M. Euphrates as a symbol in the prophetical books 511 



PROPHECY, 



VIEWED IK RESPECT TO ITS DISTINCTIVE NATURE, ITS SPE- 
CIAL FUNCTION, AND PROPER INTERPRETATION. 



-<^^- 



PART I. 

INVESTIGATION OF PEINCIPLES. 

The subject of prophecy is one that peculiarlj demands for 
its successful treatment, a spirit of careful discrimination. 
From the very nature of the subject, the want of such a spirit 
must inevitably lead to mistaken views, and even to dangerous 
results. In what respects do the prophetical portions of Scrip- 
ture differ from those which are not prophetical ? And, again, 
what specific differences separate between one portion of the 
prophetical field and another ? These are points which call for 
minute and patient inquiry, as on the right settlement of them 
much depends for the proper understanding and consistent in- 
terpretation of the prophetical Scriptures. There are certain 
characteristics of a general kind, which belong to prophecy as 
a whole ; and there are, again, subordinate peculiarities, which 
appear in some of its communications, but are wanting in 
others. The principle so strongly asserted by the apostle 
Peter, that " prophecy came not by the will of man, but holy 
men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost," 
has respect only to one, and indeed, to the most general, 
though at the same time the most fundamental, property of 
genuine prophecy, namely, the divinity of its origin. This 
property it, however, shares in common with every part of 
God's revealed word ; while yet revelation by prophecy pos- 
sesses features and occupies a place peculiar to itself. Even 
within the prophetical territory there are important differences, 

which should not be without their influence on the mode of 

2 



18 INVESTIGATION^ OF PRINCIPLES. 

treatment its several pdrtions receive at otu* hands. For proph- 
ecy is bj no means uniform, either as regards the manner in 
which it came, or the form which it assumed. Bj much the 
larger portions of its communications were the utterances of 
men who formed a distinct order, and who, in speaking as they 
were moved bj the Holy Ghost, were acting in the discharge 
of a recognized function in the Church. A certain portion, 
however, proceeded from persons who had no proper office of 
such a kind to fulfill, but were, super naturally endowed for the . 
occasion ; while other, though smaller portions, without pass- 
ing through the medium of any human instrumentality, were 
uttered by a voice direct from heaven. Of those portions, also, 
of the prophetic word which were brought through the agency 
of men, some were com^municated in visions, and others when 
the recipients were in their waking condition and their ordinary 
frame of mind. There are portions which are written in lan- 
guage comparatiyely simple; while others are clothed in the 
richest imagery, or enveloped in the mystery of symbols. 

Xow, if no regard is paid to such marked distinctions be- 
tween prophecy in general and other modes of divine revela- 
tion, and between one portion of prophecy and another ; or if 
the distinctions are practically overlooked in the mode of inter- 
pretation that is adopted, we shall seek in vain to arrive at any 
safe and satisfactory conclusions, either as regards the common 
aim of the prophetic writings, or the meaning of its several 
parts. It is to want of pains in this preliminary line of inquiry, 
more than to any other cause, that we ascribe the contradictory 
views which still continue to be propounded of various predic- 
tions, and the manifold uncertainty which still unfortunately 
seems to haunt the prophetical region. In applying our minds, 
therefore, to tliis important subject, it will be our duty, in the 
first instance, to cast our eyes over the field of prophecy, with 
the view of making ourselves accurately acquainted with some 
of its more prominent and distinctive characteristics ; and then 
on these, as the proper basis of all sound interpretation, we 
shall endeavor to find our way to such fundamental principles 
as ought to direct and regulate our inquiries into the difierent 
portions of the prophetic volume. 



THE PROPER CALLIKG OF A PROPHET. 19 



CHAPTER I. 

THE PROPER CALLING OF A PROPHET, AND THE ESSENTIAL 
NATURE OF A PROPHECY. 

The first thing tliat demands cohsideration in tWs survey 
has respect to the constituent elements of a prophecy, and 
in connection with that, the proper calling or function of a 
prophet. For here, at the very outset, the current language of 
the world, which so often governs its ideas, is fitted to create a 
false impression, and impart a misleading bias to our views. In 
ordinary language, that only is a prophecy which delivers some 
prediction of the future ; while in the original and proper sense 
this embraces but a part of the idea, and not always even the 
more principal part. The prophet, as regarded in the light of 
Scripture, w^as simply the recipient and bearer of a message 
from God; and such a message of course was a prophecy, 
whatever might be its more specific character — whether the 
disclosure of some important truth, the inculcation of an 
imperative duty, or a prospective delineation of coming events. 
A message, however, that bespoke no supernatural insight into 
the will and purposes of Heaven could not, except in peculiar 
circumstances, require a divinely-commissioned person to de- 
liver it. And so, while any communication received directly 
from above might be called a prophecy, the term was naturally 
understood only of such communications as inferred a more 
than ordinary acquaintance with spiritual and divine things ; 
but these not less than the Word spoken referred to the liighcr 
truths of God's kingdom, than when it foretold i\\Q future acts 
of his providence. 

That such actually is the scriptural idea of a true prophet 
and a prophetic Word, is evident alone from the two first occa- 
sions on which the subject is formally mentioned. " Kestore 
the man to his wife," said the Lord to Abimelech after he had 



20 THE PEOPEK CALLING OF A PEOPHET, 

taken Sarah from Abraham, " for he is a prophet." Gen. xx, 7. 
This is absolutely the first time the designation ^/•t)^^^^ is ap- 
plied to any one in Scripture ; and being used without expla- 
nation, and mth reference to a person, whose peculiar distinc- 
tion lay in his having been raised to so high a place in the 
friendship of God, where he enjoyed the privilege of direct 
intercourse with heaven, it must have been intended to denote 
Abraham as possessed of that distinction ; to characterize him 
as one admitted into the secrets, and made acquainted with 
the counsels of the Most High. The next occasion is even 
more precise and definite, as it presents the prophetical agency 
under the aspect of simply human relations. " Behold," says 
God to Moses in Exodus vii, 1, " I have made thee a god to 
Pharaoh, and Aaron, thy brother, shall be thy prophet." By 
comparing this declaration with chapter iv, 15, 16, where it is 
said,-to Moses, " Thou shalt speak unto Aaron, and put words 
in his mouth, and he shall be thy spokesman unto the people," 
it is plain that as Moses was to act God's part in giving the 
message to Aaron, so in receiving the message, and communi- 
cating it to others, Aaron was to do the prophet's part. The 
prophet, therefore, was one qualified and called to sustain this 
twofold relation to God and man — on the one side to receive, 
on the other to give forth the word received — to be, in a man- 
ner, God's mouth, for the purpose of declaring the truths and 
xmfolding the secrets which God might see meet by special 
revelation to impart to him. This was the peculiar calling of 
the prophet, and whatever was uttered in the fulfillment of 
such a calling was a prophecy."^ 

The prophetic writings themselves sufficiently attest this. 
Th&y give no countenance to the notion that the gift of 
prophecy was conferred merely for the purpose of announcing 
beforehand the coming events of Providence. The discourses 
which actually possess this character never comprise the whole, 
nor usually even the larger portion of the writings which have 
been left by the prophets to the Church. In these, viewed 
generally, the grand object seems rather to have been to deal 
with men, as in God's stead, for the interests of truth and 

* See Appendix A. 



AND THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF A PROPHECY. 21 

righteousness, and only in so far as might be required for the 
furtherance of this object to lay open the prospect of things to 
come. But the strongest proof is to be found in tlie case of 
those who, in the highest and most emphatic sense, had to do 
the part of a prophet, since it appears to have been with the 
present, rather than with the future, that their mission called 
them more immediately to deal. The persons who, above all 
others, occupied this lofty position, were Moses and Christ. 
Most commonly, indeed, they are named apart from the proph- 
ets, as if something else than prophetical gifts; something 
essentially superior to these entered into the revelations brought 
by their instrumentality to the world : hence such expressions 
as " Moses and the prophets," '* Christ and his holy apostles 
and prophets." Expressions of this sort, however, must be un- 
derstood to indicate only a relative, not an absolute difference. 
Moses was in the strictest sense a prophet, and is often so 
described, as in Hosea, chapter xii, 13, "And by a prophet the 
Lord brought Israel out of Egypt, and by a prophet was he 
preserved." jN^ot only was he a prophet in the strictest sense, 
but also in the highest degree ; for who in ancient times re- 
ceived such free and ample communications from Heaven as 
were imparted to Moses ? Or who, like him, was charged with 
a commission to order and establish everything in God's king- 
dom, in its earlier and provisional form, among men ? When 
the time, however, came for that form giving way to another 
more perfect and complete, then came also the greater than 
Moses, whom the people of God in every age have recognized 
as emphatically the prophet 'of the Church, and whom Moses 
himself descried as destined to arise, and entitled also to ob- 
tain, when he should appear, universal homage and respect. 
(Deut. xviii, 15.) 

Now, it is true alike of Moses and of Christ, that while, as 
prophets, they possessed and manifested the profoundest insight 
into divine things, the communications they actually made to 
the Church partook comparatively little of the nature of specific 
predictions respecting particular personages or events in the 
future. The whole that either of them uttered of such predic- 
tions might be comprised within the limits of a few ordinary 



22 THE PROPER CALLING OF A PROPHET, 

chapters. The other and much larger portion of their com- 
munications has to do with the great realities of faith and 
hope, or the principles of truth and duty, which form the basis 
of their respective dispensations, and is no further predictive 
of what was afterward to happen than as the present neces- 
sarily contained the germ of the future, or the manifestations 
then given of God's mind and will bespoke the recurrence of 
like manifestations, and, it may be, still higher ones in the time 
to come. It could not, indeed, have been otherwise from the 
very nature of things. The distinction we now refer to has its 
foundation, not in accidental circumstances or individual choice, 
but in the more essential relations that connect man with God, 
and the soul of one man with that of another. This we may 
learn from the world itself. The world also has its prophets; 
men in whom it recognizes " the vision and faculty divine ;" 
and, among these, some who are regarded as possessing it in a 
supereminent degree. But to whom does it assign this elevated 
place ? Not to those who labor, even though it should be with 
superior ingenuity and skill, in nature's corners and by-paths ; 
who, within some narrower range of action, light upon discov- 
eries interesting only to the few, or elaborate works, which can 
be appreciated by none but persons of exact learning or refined 
taste. Not such, but the nobler spirits who can venture boldly, 
and with a step altogether their own, upon the lofty steeps and 
broad highways of nature : the men who in science attain to 
the possession of truths which have a world-wide significance 
and value, or in literature give birth to productions which ad- 
dress themselves to the universal instincts of mankind, touch 
the springs of thought and feeling in every bosom, and become 
the common heritage of all generations and all lands. These, 
in the worldly sphere, are the gifted seers, who have an eye to 
look into nature's profounder secrets, and a tongue to interpret 
her meaning, such as is sure to meet with a response from the 
hearts of her children. And what such men are in respect to 
human and earthly things, the same in things spiritual and 
divine was Moses to the Old, and Jesus Christ to the ISTew 
Testament Church. Have not they, too, left behind them, 
above all has not Jesus Christ left behind him, the signature 



AND THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF A PROPHECY. 23 

of his peerless elevation, in the incomparable breadth and wide- 
reaching importance of his revelations ? It is not the remoter 
incidents, or more private details of the divine economy which 
his words disclose, but its grander interests and concerns ; not 
a few streamlets merely that his divine hand has laid open, 
but rather the perennial fountain itself of heavenly truth. Of 
no work could it be said wi4E such manifold reason as of his, 
that it is not of an age, but for all time ; in the heights it 
reaches, in the depths it explores, in the very form it assumes, 
it bears the impress of relative perfection and completeness. 
And it had been a mark, not of a more elevated, but of an 
inferior prophetical insight, it had stamped his mission as of a 
subordinate and temporary kind, rather than as one of primary 
importance and indestructible value, if his communications had 
turned more upon particular incidents of providence, and the 
varying evolutions of the world's history. 

This signature of relative greatness and superiority in the 
nature of the divine communications, which came by Christ, 
and in a measure also by Moses, is accompanied, and, as it 
were, accredited by another signature in the mode of communi- 
cation. In the case of Moses, a difference in this latter respect 
was formally established by God himself, and for the express 
purpose of marking the higher place of power and influence 
which rightfully belonged to his servant. Kebul^ing the pre- 
sumption of Aaron and Miriam, who had become jealous of the 
pre-eminent rank of their brother, and had been saying to the 
congregation, " Hath the Lord indeed spoken only by Moses ? 
Hath he not spoken also by us ?" the Lord interposed to give 
an authoritative decision, and said, " Hear now my words : If 
there be a prophet among you, I the Lord will make myself 
known to him in a vision, in a dream I will speak to him. Not 
so my servant Moses : he is faithful in all my house. Mouth to 
mouth I speak to him, and appearance [that is, as with open 
face,] and not in dark speeches ; and the similitude [form] of 
the Lord he beholds." Num. xii, 6-8.^' With an evident refer- 
ence to this passage, the singular pre-eminence of Moses is 
again noticed near the close of his life, (Deut. xxxiv, 10,) " And 

* See Appendix B. 



24 THE PROPEK CALLING OF A PROPHET, 

there arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses, whom 
the Lord knew face to face." There was a certain amount of 
truth mixed up with the allegation of Aaron and Miriam : 
they did possess a kind of prophetical character, (Exod. xv, 
20, 21 ; Micah vi, 4,) though of an inferior description as com- 
pared with the prophets generally, and greatly more so when 
viewed in reference to the position of Moses, between whom 
and the other prophets a marked distinction is drawn. The 
distinction bears respect to a difference in the mode of revela- 
tion : in the case of Moses, an open, waking, face to face inter- 
communion; while with the other prophets communications 
were to be made by dreams and visions. But this difference 
in the mode is made to rest upon a distinction in the office. 
Moses, as the mediator of the old covenant, had devolved on 
him the care of the whole house or kingdom of God, and con- 
sequently required to have the freest intercourse with heaven, 
and the most explicit instructions, to enable him to order every- 
thing aright. But the other and ordinary members of the pro- 
phetical order had no such high commission to fulfill. Standing 
upon the foundation already laid by Moses, and charged to 
enforce and maintain, but not allowed to remodel or dispense 
with any of its provisions, they necessarily had but a limited 
range of operations to mind, and messages of a more special 
kind to bring. These are the principal points of difference 
established in this fundamental passage in l^umbers between 
Moses and the other prophets. But the Jewish doctors are 
fond of multiplying the marks of superiority in Moses, for the 
purpose of investing him with a more transcendent glory. 
Thus Maimonides* finds as many as four notes of distinction 
possessed by Moses, and wanting in the prophets generally : 
First, in God's speaking to him without the mediation of an 
angel, in direct discourse, as one man might do with another ; 
secondly, in his having communications made to him openly, 
not hj way of vision or dream ; thirdly, in his being able to 
hold intercourse with God without suffering such corporeal 
languishings and faintings of nature as were sometimes at least 
experienced by men of ordinary prophetical gifts ; and, lastly, 

* Porta Mosis, Pockoke's Works, vol. i, pp. 63, 64. 



AND THE ESSENTIAL NATUEE OF A PROPHECY. 25 

in his having habitual access to God for supernatural revela- 
tions ; while to others these came only at distant intervals, and 
at times also required to be preceded by a season of special 
preparation. These four grounds of distinction are merely an 
expansion, by the introduction of related circumstances and 
effects, of the two points noticed above from the passage in 
Numbers ; they admit of being all comprised in the singular 
dignity of the office of Moses, and the consequent openness and 
freedom of his intercourse with heaven. It was in these pecul- 
iarly that he rose so much superior to all who succeeded him 
in the dispensation he introduced. 

The privilege of holding free and open communication with 
heaven in respect to the secret things of God, however it may 
have distinguished Moses from other prophets, only attained 
its perfection in Christ, as in him also the ground on which it 
rests becomes immeasurably higher and broader. Moses had 
the honor of being counted faithful as a servant over the house 
of God ; yet it was only as a servant, at a time too when the 
house was comparatively small, and when the service to be done 
in it had for its highest aim the providing of " a testimony be- 
forehand of those things which were to be spoken after." 
Christ, however, has the place of a son. It is his to exercise 
authority and rule in the divine kingdom, as in his own house; 
and hence the revelations which came by him, as in their own 
nature they were the highest that could be given, so in their 
form and manner they were the most natural and direct, the 
freest from whatever partook of outward formality or inward 
constraint. In him the Spirit of the Father resided in unre- 
stricted fullness ; nay, he himself knew the Father, as could be 
done only by one who possessed the same nature, and had 
freest access to his bosom : so that the words he spake, the doc- 
trine he taught, and the works he performed, were not more 
his own than the Father's. (John i, 18 ; iii, 13, 34 ; Matt, xi, 
25-27.) Here, therefore, the intercourse with heaven reached 
the highest degree of closeness and intimacy. It was not so 
properly God speaking to man, as God speaking in man and 
through man ; and on that account speaking not only with a 
clearness and comprehension of view, but also with a self-pos- 



26 THE PROPER CALLING OF A PROPHET, 

sessed manner and a heaven-like elevation of tone pecnliarlj 
his own. To some extent, indeed, though very imperfectly as 
compared with Christ, the apostles shared in this higher stand- 
ing and freer communion, to such an extent as to form a 
marked distinction between them and the prophets of the 
earlier dispensation. For, excepting on a few special occasions, 
(Acts X ; 2 Cor. xir ; jRev. joassim^ they never appear to have 
received revelations in a trance or vision ; and, like men habit- 
ually replenished with the Spirit, they spoke and wrote as if 
the Lord himself spoke and wrote in them. (1 Cor. ii, 12 ; xiv, 
37 ; 2 Cor. xiii, 3.) They therefore deemed it unnecessary to 
preface their discourses with the wonted formula of the proph- 
ets, " Thus saith the Lord." As possessed by them, the pro- 
phetical gift corresponded with the comparative maturity and 
freedom of their I^Tew Testament position ; and in the exercise 
of it they seemed more like persons in their native element, 
with full scope on every side for the free development of their 
susceptibilities and powers, than for the moment raised into a 
region not properly congenial to them. 

Thus there were differences between prophet and prophet, 
and between one kind of prophetical agency and another ; and 
by carefully noting these we are enabled to draw the line of 
demarcation between what is essential and what is merely cir- 
cumstantial in the matter. 

1. It was, first of all, essential to the prophet that he should 
have direct personal communications from above, constituting 
him, in a sense quite special and peculiar, the medium of inter- 
communion between heaven and earth ; and, consequently, that 
he should possess a state and temper of soul such as might 
form a proper recipiency for the divine communications. In 
no case could these be dispensed with. . l^ot the actual com- 
munications, for on them depended the very substance of the 
message he had to deliver ; not the suitable inward recipiency, 
for in that stood the capacity to apprehend, and the fidelity to 
use, what of supernatural insight might be imparted to him. 
That " vision and faculty divine " of which the world speaks 
must have belonged to him, and in another manner than its 
most gifted seers can attain to ; since he had to see what even 



AND THE ESSENTIAL NATUEE OF A PEOPHECY. 27 

these could not see, and to hear what they heard not ; nay, not 
only to see and hear, but to give it willing audience in the 
inmost chamber of his soul. For Scripture knows as little of 
automaton prophets as the world knows of automaton orators 
or poets. Spirit to spirit ; a spirit in man rightly attempered 
and formed to the revelations presented to it by the Spirit of 
God ; such is the essential law of God's working in his more 
peculiar not less than in his more common operations on the 
souls of men. The prophet, therefore, was emphatically what 
he was also often designated, " a man of God." He was one 
who entered into God's mind, who breathed God's Spirit, whose 
very heart and soul were imbued with the truth and righteous- 
ness of God ; so that when he came forth to speak to his fellow- 
men it was to utter feelings of which he was himself profoundly 
conscious ; to proclaim a message which hadfirst given light to 
his own eyes, and awakened a response in the sanctuary of his 
own bosom. This much was essential to the proper calling and 
agency of a prophet, and could not, save in cases altogether ex- 
ceptional, be dispensed with."^ 

But it was not essential, however commonly it may be so 
represented, that the prophet, when receiving the divine com- 
munication, should be agitated and convulsed in the process, 
should be moved and driven to and fro, as by some overpower- 
ing and arbitrary impulse. Such might occasionally have been 
the case with him ; but never in the Hebrew prophet as in the 
heathen soothsayer, (the iiavrig^ who sought by external appli- 
ances to excite his spirit into a kind of sacred frenzy, and 
appeared and spoke as one borne away by a really divine fer 
vor. The settled rule in the sphere of Scripture prophecy was 
that " the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets ;" 
the higher impulse stimulating the natural powers, and inform- 
ing their minds with supernatural revelations, but never de- 
stroying either their personal freedom or their proper individ- 
uality. And even the regulated excitation of entranced feeling 
was so far from being essential to the existence of a prophetic 
agency in its larger sense, that it had the least play in those 

* See Appendix C. 



28 THE PKOPER CALLING OF A PEOPHET, 

wlio occupied the liigliest standing, and were most plentifully 
endowed with the prophetic spirit. 

2. Secondly, in regard to the communication received by the 
prophet, it was essential that this should constitute a message 
respecting the things of God which it became God in a super- 
natural manner to impart, and his people through an extraor- 
dinary message to receive. For otherwise the necessary condi- 
tion of the prophet's existence, or the appropriate evidence of 
his mission, must have been wanting. He would have been 
like those dreamers who came forth in the name of the Lord 
to speak to the people, though they had seen nothing, nothing 
at least that required the immediate interposition of divine 
authority, and a direct revelation from heaven. 

But it was not essential, it was a matter that depended upon 
the time and the occasion, whether in the word he spake there 
might be any explicit announcements of coming events in prov- 
idence, or, if any, how far they might reach. In a more general 
sense every prophecy might be said to carry in its bosom a 
revelation of things to come, as it never failed to disclose the 
fundamental truths and principles of God's righteous govern- 
ment, and to represent them as the moral hinges on which the 
dispensations of time and the issues of eternity must eventually 
turn. In Old Testament times, more especially, it could not 
fail to have much of a prospective bearing on the future, as 
everything then pointed onward to a more perfect state of 
things. But in the more specific sense of precise and definite 
information respecting the future operations of God in the 
world, prophecy, as we have seen, was far from being uniform. 
JS^either did it always enter into such prospective details, nor, 
when it did, was the disclosure of these made to assume the 
appearance of the more direct and primary object it aimed at. 
It difiered essentially from that soothsaying or divination which 
prevailed so extensively in the heathen world, and which, by 
improperly prying into the future, always betokened distrust in 
God, and naturally allied itself with idolatry. The very cri- 
terion laid down by Moses for testing the claims of those who 
might assume to speak as prophets of the Most High gave 
clear indication of this, and marked the relative position which 



AND THE ESSENTIAL NATUEE OF A PEOPHECY. 29 

the circumstantial here should bear to the essential in. prophecy. 
If a prophet, it was said, (Deut. xiii, 1-5,) should arise, and give 
a sign of wonder which should come to pass, but at the same 
time should seek to draw people away after other gods, and 
lead them to forsake the worship and service of Jehovah, they 
were on no account to accredit his testimony, or regard him as 
a messenger of God, but were rather to suppose that through 
his plausible pretensions Grod was making trial of their fidelity. 
What could have more strikingly shown that the moral and 
religious element in prophecy was ever to be viewed as occupy- 
ing the primary, and the predictive no more than the secondary 
and subservient place ? The ordinary prophet was not to be 
expected to introduce anything essentially new. On the con- 
trary, he was to make it patent to all that he stood on the old 
foundations; and as a true watchman of Grod, jealous for the 
honor and glory of Him who laid them, was bound to raise 
the alarm when he saw them in danger of being destroyed, and 
freshen up in men's souls the eternal principles of truth and 
duty in which they consisted. Only as a handmaid to this 
more determinate part of his function was the disclosure of 
future events to be looked for at the hands of the prophet. 
And a surer sign, either of a false claim to the divine gift, or 
of a false apprehension and mistaken estimate of the true, 
could scarcely be named than the reversing of this scriptural 
order, by raising the subsidiary element into the place of the 
principal. 

3. Again, and in respect to the last stage of the process, it 
was essential that the prophet should faithfully record or utter 
the revelations he obtained. He must not only deliver his 
message, but deliver it as he had himself received it — like an 
impartial and incorrupt witness, declaring what his eyes had 
seen and his ears had heard in the visions of God. 'No more 
in this department of his calling, when dealing with men in 
behalf of God, was it lawful for him to confer with flesh and 
blood than when, in the other, he was dealt with by God in 
behalf of men. A select embassador of heaven, he had but one 
thing in a manner to do, to speak what God had put into his 
heart without fearing the face of man, or listening to the sug- 



30 THE PROPER GALLING OF A PROPHET, 

gestions of liis lower nature. Had tliis condition failed, as for 
a moment it did fail in the case of Jonah, the indispensable 
characteristic of a prophet had been wanting. 

But it was not essential that in this outward communication 
of the light that shone within him there should have been any- 
thing like forcible pressure or violence in the tone and manner 
in which it was done. A certain amount of this there may 
have been ; there occasionally was ; yet not " as a form neces- 
sarily cleaving to everything prophetical ;" as if the prophet- 
ical, "in its works of greater moment and abiding faithfnlness, 
could not possibly exist withont it." * It could not, indeed, 
exist without the internal impulse of holy feeling and impress- 
ible energy of purpose, bearing the prophet's soul aloft, and 
rendering it superior to all earthly considerations. But this 
may be found in a region of perfect calmness and serenity, nay, 
found there in the highest degree. It was, in reality, so found 
for the most part by Moses, but always and entirely by Jesus 
Christ, whose words, even when laying open the sublimest mys- 
teries, are remarkable for nothing more than the perfect com- 
posure and unruffled calmness of spirit which they breathe. 
Whatever, therefore, might at any time appear in the prophet 
of disturbed feeling or undue excitation, so far from being a 
necessary accompaniment of his prophetical calling, is rather 
to be ascribed to his own imperfect elevation of soul, or the 
embarrassments of his outward condition. If he was himself 
conscious of some difficulty in fully embracing as his own the 
word committed to him ; or if he had to proclaim that word 
to a people who were maintaining an attitude of stout-hearted 
resistance to the will of God, then something of violent agita- 
tion, or even of impassioned vehemence in his manner, might 
not unnaturally be looked for. But it was still only an inci- 
dental and separable adjunct, not an essential attribute, of a 
prophet's calling. 

Now, from the whole of the considerations here advanced, 
and more especially from what has been stated regarding the 
quite singular nature of the position occupied by Moses and 
Christ in respect to the revelation of the divine will, one can 

* Ewald, Propheten, p. 8. 



AND THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF A PROPHECY. 31 

readily understaiid how tliey should be so commonly placed 
apart from the strictly prophetical order. In reality, it was in 
them that the spirit of prophecy had its noblest exercise, and 
rose to its highest perfection. But this very perfection threw 
so wide a gulf between them and the persons who possessed 
the more ordinary prophetical gifts that the latter alone came 
to be regarded as by way of distinction the prophets, and the 
two others were contemplated as moving in a loftier sphere. 
Hence, even John the Baptist is called by our Lord "more 
than a prophet," though it was in the character of ^a prophet 
that he had been previously announced, (Isa. xl, 6 ; Mai. iv, 5 ; 
Luke i, 16, 17 ;) and beyond doubt it was the distinctive work 
of a prophet in which his mission had its fulfillment. 

But the same considerations which account for the usual 
restriction of the term prophet to others than Moses and Christ, 
also explains how the word spoken by these others should par- 
take largely of predictions, and should even thence derive, in 
the popular conception, its predominant characteristic. It 
naturally arose from the dependent and supplementary nature 
of such prophecy as compared with the revelations brought in 
by Moses and Christ. In these the more important and funda- 
mental things of the divine economy had already been estab- 
lished. The truths on which the respective dispensations were 
based might afterward be reiterated anew, or applied to the 
different phases of error and corruption which successively 
arose ; germs of spiritual thought implanted tliere might be 
expanded and matured ; existing institutions also, after seasons 
of decay, might have the breath of a new and more \^gorous 
life breathed into them ; all this might be done in connection 
with the one dispensation or the other, and to provide for its 
accomplishment was always one great design of God in the 
bestowal of prophetical gifts. But the doing of such work, 
from its very nature of a subsidiary and ministerial kind, could 
not of itself, even in the most favorable circumstances, yield 
so convincing a proof of direct communication with God, and 
of supernatural insight into the counsels of heaven, as the clear 
delineation of yet future events in Providence. iN'or could the 
prophets, as the more select agents and witnesses of God among 



32 THE PROPER CALLING OF A PROPHET. 

men, be properly qualified for their important mission, unless 
they had been enabled to direct their eye into the future, and 
make some disclosure of its coming issues. For it was to 
these issues they naturally pointed for the confirmation of the 
principles they affirmed, and the vindication of the part they 
took in the eyer-proceeding controversy between sin and right- 
eousness. So that, whether we look to the nature of their call- 
ing, or to what was needed for its proper authentication, it 
could scarcely fail that prophecy, in its more regular and 
wonted ministrations, should partake much of a predictive 
character, and by indications of supernatural foresight should 
often give conclusive evidence of its divine origin. 

It is of prophecy in this more special and restricted sense — 
of prophecy as containing announcements more or less specific 
of the future — that the word must be chiefly employed in dis- 
cussions like the present. In this sense we must henceforth 
be understood to use the term where no intimation to the con- 
trary is given. It is undoubtedly a great limitation of the 
scriptural idea, and embraces what is but a particular and sub- 
ordinate province of the field. This must be carefully borne 
in mind if we would either form a correct estimate of the sub- 
ject itself, or arrive at safe and well-grounded principles of 
interpretation. To set out with such a definition of prophecy 
in general as this, that " it is a prediction of some contingent 
circumstance or event in the future, received by immediate and 
direct revelation," " a definition which, if not formally given, 
is for the most part tacitly assumed in works on prophecy, 
betokens, in the first instance, a partial view of what the 
prophetic field properly embraces, and it must inevitably lead 
to practical mistakes in the treatment of particular portions 
belonging to it. 

* So Yitringa, Typus Proph. Doc. p. 1. 



THE PLACE OF PROPHECY IN HISTORY. 33 



CHAPTER II. 

THE PLACE OF PROPHECY IN HISTORY, AND THE ORGANIC 
CONNECTION OF THE ONE WITH THE OTHER. 

From the relation of prophecy in the more restricted to 
prophecy in the more general and comprehensive sense, we 
come by a very natural transition to consider the relation of 
prophecy to history. The consideration of this point also will 
be found to turn, in some degree, on the distinction between 
the two aspects of prophecy abeady noticed, the fundamental 
and the subsidiary ; and will suggest reflections as to the proper 
treatment of the prophetic volume very closely allied to some 
of the considerations urged in the preceding chapter. 

The most cursory glance over the pages of Scripture can 
leave no doubt that prophecy, in so far as it consists in predic- 
tions of coming events in providence, exists there in very various 
and irregular proportions. In the Old Testament, to which 
alone we shall for the present refer, it appears somewhat like 
a river, small in its beginnings, and though still proceeding, 
yet often losing itself for ages under ground, then bursting 
forth anew with increased volume, and at last rising into a 
swollen stream — greatest by far when it has come within pros- 
pect of its termination. During the whole antediluvian period 
of the world it could scarcely be said to exist, excepting at the 
beginning and the close ; and even then only in small amount 
and apart from any regular official ministration. The first 
prophecy, called forth by the circumstances of the fall, deline- 
ates in graphic but general and comprehensive outlines the 
leading characteristics of the world's history; projects as it 
were the channels alike of evil and of good, in which the stream 
of events was destined to run, yet so as to give sure prognosti- 
cation of the final ascendency of the good over the evil. In- 
definite as this prophecy was, it was of unspeakable moment, 



84: THE PLACE OF PKOPHECY IN HISTORYj AND THE 

on account of the promise it embodied to the heart of faith, 
whereby, in the midst of brooding darkness and wide-wasting 
destruction, it lighted up the hope of better things to come. 
As a prediction, however, of contingent events, destined to ap- 
pear in the future, this primeval word of life is scarcely to be 
mentioned, since it rather announced great principles of work- 
ing, and pointed to ultimate results, than defined beforehand 
particular acts of Providence. And this holds yet more of the 
prophecy of Enoch, (Jude v, 14, 15,) which may be regarded 
merely as an application of the prophecy uttered at the fall, to 
the times of growing apostacy and wickedness in which he 
lived. It declared the certainty of God's appearing to check 
the temporary triumph of the adversary and establish the just. 
The revelation to ISToah of the general deluge is again but the 
more specific application of Enoch's announcement, and is, in 
truth, the first definite prediction we meet with — ^beiug re- 
quired for the support of ISToah's faith amid an almost univer- 
sal backsliding, and for the direction of his course in respect 
to the approaching catastrophe. 

Subsequently to the deluge a series of prophecies follow each 
other at considerable intervals, not unlike in their general char- 
acter. There is, first, xToah's own prediction respecting the 
state and prospects of his posterity, a prediction, indeed, con- 
siderably more definite in its intimations than that pronounced 
at the fall, but still, like this, pointing chiefly to the essential 
principles of the divine government, and to the relation in 
which his offspring, by the three lines of descent, should stand 
to these, and through these to each other. Then, at the dis- 
tance of some centuries, come the revelations to Abraham 
respecting his seed, and the closely dependent prophecies of 
Isaac and Jacob to their children ; each of them successively 
growing in precision and definiteness, but dwelling still upon 
the relative positions and prospects of stems, and races, and 
tribes, rather than upon individual personages or particular 
events. The promise of Shiloh, as a center of unity and peace, 
to arise out of the tribe of Judah, is the most specific in the 
series, and for the first time gives prominence to a single indi- 
vidual in the perspective- of the more distant future. But, as 



ORGANIC CONNECTION OF THE ONE WITH THE OTHER. 35 

a whole, those patriarchal prophecies turned mainly on the 
general points, through what line of descent the more peculiar 
blessing of the covenant with Abraham was to flow ; how, 
even within this favored line, distinctions of higher and lower, 
better and worse, should exist, according as the persons con- 
cerned might stand related to the moral ends of the covenant ; 
and how, along with the heritage of good promised and secured, 
there should be also the constant intermingling of struggles, 
conflicts, and sorrows, necessarily calling for the exercise of 
faith and patience on the part of the true children of the cove- 
nant. It holds of these patriarchal predictions, as well as of 
those which preceded them, that not one of them was given 
" like an isolated phenomenon, or merely to demonstrate the 
prescience of their all- wise Creator, but were all by him en- 
grafted upon the exigency of times and persons, and made to 
serve as a light of direction to the attentive observers of them 
before the event had set the seal to their truth." * Their pri- 
mary and immediate object unquestionably was to give, as the 
ever-changing circumstances of the world required, counsel or 
encouragement to the children of promise in respect to their 
more peculiar trials and dangers, hopes and obligations. And 
in so far as they may have tended to produce any other re- 
sults, the efiect could only be regarded as subsidiary and inci- 
dental. 

Centuries of silence and darkness passed away, after the last 
words of Jacob were uttered, without any addition being made 
to the prophetic oracles. But the time at length came for 
carrying into fulfillment the promise of an inheritance made to 
the seed of Abraham; and then, with the appearance and mis- 
sion of Moses, the well-nigh expiring night of prophecy bursts 
forth at once into a sudden blaze ; but prophecy, (as formerly 
stated,) chiefly of the more fundamental and primary kind, 
dealing less in predictions of coming events than in the great 
principles of truth and duty, as connected with the introduc- 
tion of a new phase of the divine administration. There loere 

* "Davison on Prophecy," p. 99, who makos this just remark on prophecy in 
general, witliout, however, having sufficiently investigated or freely applied the 
principle involved in it. 



3(5 THE PLACE OF PKOPHECY IX HISTOEY, AND THE 

certain distinct assurances given through Moses to the Israel- 
ites regarding their possession of Canaan, and a series of hypo- 
thetical predictions uttered regarding the evil and the good 
that might afterward befall them there ; (Lev. xxvi ; Deut. 
xxviii, xxxiii ;) hypothetical, inasmuch as the blessings and the 
cursings prospectively announced were uttered merely as de- 
ductions that grew out of the government under which they 
were placed, taken in connection with the course that might 
be pursued by future generations. But, if we except such 
parts of the T^oitings of Moses, the revelations which came by 
him cannot be termed prophecies in the sense now understood. 
The predictions spoken by Balaam, though appearing only as 
a sort of interlude in the Mosaic record, possess more of the 
simply predictive element. The circumstances of the time, 
especially the perilous situation of Israel, required something 
of this description. And as it could be most effectually done 
from the camp of the adversary, so the extraordinary course 
was taken of making use of the heathen diviner to send forth 
rays of Eght respecting the fature purposes of God, which were 
to be afterward expanded into yet more full and explicit de- 
lineations. 

The age of Moses is succeeded by another long break in the 
prophetic chain. Persons with prophetic insight occasionally 
appear during the period of the Judges, but only as rare and 
glimmering lights, for it was a time for heroic action rather 
than for lofty utterances. Prophecy, in its formal character, 
comes into view only in the age of Samuel, with whom properly 
originates the prophetical order of the Old Testament. And, 
in the history of this order, it is to be remarked how small a 
part prediction plays in its earlier operations. The series opens 
with it in the loud and terrible denunciation of judgment which 
came forth against the degenerate house of Eli, (1 Sam. ii, iii,) 
and it recurs from time to time afterward, as in the difficult 
and perplexing circumstances connected with the elevation of 
Saul to the throne, the election of David in his stead, and the 
rending of David's kingdom in the time of Kehoboam. At 
this period, however, the predictions uttered were manifestly of 
a quite occasional and circumscribed nature. They gave forth, 



OEGANIC CONNECTION OF THE ONE WITH THE OTHER. 37 

indeed, gleams of supernatural liglit, sucli as were required by 
the members of the covenant in seasons of emergency and 
danger, but not of a kind to occupy more than a merely frag- 
mentary portion of the prophetical activity of the period. This 
activity, originating in Samuel, and by him organized and per- 
petuated through regular institutions, called Schools of the 
Prophets^ exerted itself mainly as a spirit of revival, and spent 
its energies greatly more in conducting practical operations 
than in searching into or disclosing hidden mysteries. This 
was what the circumstances of the time especially required. 
It was not so much new revelations that were needed, as an 
inworking into the feelings and habits of the people of the 
revelations which had already been received. The members 
of the prophetical order, therefore, usually appear as the more 
select portion of the Levitical and priestly classes, to which, 
with probably few exceptions, they belonged. Hence they 
sometimes took part in the performance of services that were 
strictly of a priestly character, (1 Sam. ix, 13, etc.,) but more 
commonly were employed in holding meetings for devotional 
exercises and spiritual instruction, in the hope of thereby re- 
kindling the iiame of piety, and diffusing the fear of God 
throughout the land. Such seems to have been the distinctive 
nature of the prophetic agency for centuries after the age of 
Samuel. The prophets were in a peculiar sense the spiritual 
watchmen of Judah and Israel, the representatives of divine 
truth and holiness, whose part it was to keep a wakeful and 
jealous eye upon the manners of the times, to detect and re- 
prove the symptoms of defection which appeared, and by every 
means in their power foster and encourage the spirit of real 
godliness. And such pre-eminently was Elijah, who is there- 
fore taken in Scripture itself as the type of the whole prophet- 
ical order in this earlier stage of its development ; a man of 
heroic energy of action rather than of prolific thought and ele- 
vating discourse. The words he spake were few, but they were 
words spoken as from the secret place of thunder, and seemed 
more like decrees issuing from the presence of the Eternal, than 
the utterances of one of like passions with those he addressed. 
Appearing at a time when the very foundations were out of 



38 THE PLACE OF PKDPHECY IN HISTORY, AND THE 

course, and the most flagrant enormities were openly practiced in 
the high places of the land, he boldly stood forth in the name 
of God as a wrestler in the cause of righteousness, not so much 
to plead for it as to avenge and vindicate it, as if the time had 
come for deciding the controversy by deeds rather than by 
words. For this gigantic work power was given him to smite 
the earth with plagues, and to torment those who dwelt on it, 
and wlio were corrupting it by their wicked deeds. (1 Kings 
xvii, xviii ; Rev. xi, 6.) But when the results aimed at by this 
severe and stern agency were in a good measui*e accomplished, 
when by terrible things in righteousness the daring of the ad- 
versary had been quelled, and an open field had been won for 
active operations, his mission called him to work of another 
kind ; such work as was fitly symbolized by the still small voice 
at Horeb, in which now, and not in the whirlwind, the earth- 
quake, or the fire, the Lord made himself known to his servant. 
Enough, it was virtually said to the prophet, of such overawing 
displays of power as have hitherto been put forth. They have 
already served their more immediate purpose, but work of a 
more peaceful and regenerative nature still remains to be done. 
The decayed Schools of the Prophets must be revived, and 
spiritual labors prosecuted, if haply through such instrument- 
ality the hearts of the children may be quickened into newness 
of life, and turned back to the Lord their God. And so, after 
he had by patient and faithful exertion approved himself in 
this part also of his prophetical mission, he was received up to 
heaven in a chariot of glory. 

The only remarkable divergence from the general course 
which appears in this great series of prophetical agency, after 
the pattern of Samuel, is that of David's circle, including, 
besides himself, Nathan, Solomon, and the more distinguished 
men of certain Levite families, who took part in the composi- 
tion of the Psalms. So far this collateral branch pf prophecy 
corresponds with the main stem, that here also the grand aim 
was of a practical kind. It had for its direct object the infus- 
ing of new life and vigor into the Mosaic institutions, and pro- 
moting among all classes of the people the cultivation of that 
righteousness which they were designed to plant and nourish. 



ORGANIC CONNECTION OF THE ONE WITH THE OTHER. 39 

Bat with this general resemblance the agency of David and 
his coadjutors differed from that of the cotemporary prophet- 
ical order, in the more judicial character of the measures em- 
ployed on the side of righteousness, and also in the frequent 
composition of inspired writings. Here there was not only 
action, but action pursuing its ends through the channels of 
constituted government, with the view of purging out evil 
from the kingdom, and rendering it in reality what it was in 
name, a commonwealth of saints. And along with this, some- 
times also without it, there was ever and anon flowing the pure 
stream of didactic and devotional poetry. Popular and sacred 
song, chanted first upon the lyre of the son of Jesse, and after- 
ward continued by a noble band of like-minded companions 
and followers, breathed forth in lofty strains the spiritual es- 
sence of the Mosaic ritual, which it also touchingly inwrought 
with the feelings of a profound and varied personal experience. 
By consecrating such productions to the interest of religion, 
and even associating them, as was usually done, with the serv- 
ice of the sanctuary, the believing Israelite was supplied with 
forms of thought and feeling suited to all the moods of his soul, 
and the diversified circumstances of his condition. And to 
these spiritual songs, so fragrant with the odor of divine 
truth and sanctified experience, were added others (indited after 
the promise brought by IlTathan to David respecting the per- 
petuity of the kingdom in David's line) usually designated, by 
way of eminence, the Messianic Psalms, which interweave the 
predictive with the devotional and experimental elements, by 
pointing to the greater personage and nobler results in which 
the kingdom was to find its ultimate completion. Of both 
parts of the psalmodic poetr^^ it may be said that the primary 
tendency and design was to inspirit the entire framework of 
the ancient economy with the measure of life of which it was 
susceptible^ and to carry its members to the highest degree of 
light and purity it might be possible for them to reach under 
that provisional state of things. 

In process of time, however, it became evident that all these 
extraordinary efforts, both by the prophetical order generally 
and in the collateral line of operations originated by David, 



40 THE PLACE OF PKOPHECY IN HISTORY, A^TD THE 



could not avail to stem the tide of corruption, and raise the 
affairs of the old economy to the desired elevation, or even to 
save them from fatal disorder and ruin. Too manifestlv the 
external fabric of its institutions must be taken down, and the 
kingdom of God among men cast in another mould. As soon 
as this melancholy result came distinctly into view, then began 
the later and, as regards specific predictions, the 'more fully 
developed stage of ancient prophecy. It commenced with 
Hosea and Amos, (if not with Jonah,) in the kingdom of Israel, 
and with Joel and Isaiah in that of Judah ; and had its dis- 
tinctive characteristic in this, that while the prophets did not 
cease to lift their voice against prevailing evils, and strive for 
a return to the old paths, yet seeing everything as it then stood 
tottering to its foundation, they chiefly directed their eye to 
the more distant future, and disclosed the purposes of God re- 
specting the higher development of the divine kingdom now in 
prospect, along with the destinies awaiting the earthly states 
and dominions which had disputed, or might yet dispute, with 
it the claim for empire. In this period, as the prophetical writ- 
ings were greatly more numerous than in any previous one, 
so, from the very nature of the case, they go more into details 
about the future, and supply our amplest materials for com- 
paring the anticipations of prophecy with the subsequent events 
of history. 

In this brief sui'vey we have purposely confined our view to 
the more general features of the subject, such as may be per- 
ceived on the most cursory inspection, and about which there 
can scarcely be any difference of opinion. The more minute 
investigations connected with its several parts will be matter 
for future inquiry and consideration. Meanwhile, from the 
outline itself, various thoughts naturally suggest themselves as 
to the relations of prophecy to history, and these of some im- 
portance for a correct appreciation of the nature and function 
of prophecy. 

1. First of all, it is obvious that the prophecy of Scripture 
is closely interwoven with its history. So far from standing 
by itself in a sort of isolation and independence, it is in con- 
nection with the facts of history that prophetical revelations 



ORGANIC CONKECTION OF THE ONE WITH THE OTHER. 41 

took at once their rise and their form. It is so in whichever 
light the revelations of prophecy be contemplated — whether in 
the higher and more enlarged sense of divine communications 
respecting the mind and purposes of God, or in the more 
limited sense of predictions of things to come. As prophecy, 
however, in this latter sense, appears in Scripture as only a 
particular and comparatively subordinate department of a wider 
field, it naturally enters less in this sense than in the other 
into the bulk and texture of sacred history. Prophetic com- 
munications and prophetic agency occur often in the greatest 
frequency, and tell with the most powerful effect upon the 
course of events, when little is to be met with of predictions — 
at least of clear and definite predictions — of coming events in 
providence. 

But even in this narrower sense — the one also with which 
we have now more especially to do — the connection between 
prophecy and history is alike close and pervading. A prophetic 
thread runs through the whole of the inspired records, and 
binds together both ends of revelation. To a certain extent 
this is not peculiar to the Bible, but belongs to it in common 
with the products of human thought and observation, which 
record the facts of providence, or unfold the principles on which 
they proceed. For, as has been justly said,* " prophecy is not 
an anomaly ; it springs from the natare of Jehovah, the self- 
existent and eternal, who gives continuity to existence, and 
perpetuity to knowledge. Philosophy is prophetic as well as 
religion ; the fact discovered to-day becomes the prediction of 
that which will take place under exactly similar circumstances 
when ages have rolled away, as long as the present system of 
creation remains." f Hence also the saying of our great poet : 

* " Douglas on the Structure of Prophecy," p. 4. 

f On this ground Coleridge said admirably of Burke, " He possessed, and had 
sedulously sharpened, the eye which sees all things, actions, and events, in relation 
to the laws that determine their existence and circumscribe their possibility. He 
referred habitually to principles. He was a scientific statesman, and therefore a 
seer. For every principle contains in itself the germs of a propliecy ; and as the 
prophetic power is the essential principle of science, so the fulfillment of its oracles 
supplies the outward and (to men in general) the only test of its claim to the 
title."— Biog. Lit., I, p. 195. 



4:2 THE PLACE OF PEOPHECY IN HISTORY, AND THE 

" There is a history in all men's lives, 
Eiguring the nature of the times deceased ; 
The which observed, a man may prophesy 
With a near aim of the main chance of things 
As yet not come to life, which in their seeds 
And weak beginnings lie intreasured." 

There is a profound tnitli in such utterances, but not by any 
means the whole truth as connected with prophecy in Scripture ; 
since they have respect to the prophetic element merely as 
involved in the general principles of the divine administration, 
and make no account of the more peculiar points of contact 
which Scripture presents between heaven and earth, and the 
more vital links with which the present is there bound with 
the future. Sacred history furnishes other materials of a pro- 
phetic nature than are to be found in " men's lives," or in the 
common operations of providence. For God is in the Church 
as he is not in the world ; and the history which records the 
manifestations he gives of himself in the former, has aspects 
to unfold of his perfections and character which will be sought 
for in vain amid the light of natural science or the annals of 
earthly transactions. The fundamental difference lies in this, 
that in the Church there is the revelation of God's grace ; 
and grace from its very nature is instinct with the spirit of 
prophecy. Seeking to achieve, by a happy combination of 
righteousness Ttdth mercy, the redemption of the fallen, it 
necessarily anticipates not only a future, but a future greater 
and better than the present : therefore awakening desire and 
hope in respect to things not seen as yet, and pointing expect- 
ation onward to their coming realization. Hence the first pro- 
mulgation of grace is also the first prophecy, (Gen. iii, 15 ;) a 
prophecy, no doubt, vague and indeterminate as regards actual 
personages and events, but perfectly explicit as to the certainty 
of a deliverance to be accomplished by God, and to be patiently 
waited for by men. And continually as the work of grace 
proceeded on its course, multiplying its proofs of the loving- 
kindness of God, and of his determination to vindicate the 
cause of his chosen, especially from the time its professed re- 
cipients were bound together as the members of a visible king- 
dom, and had their expectations of coming good associated 



ORGANIC CONNECTION OF THE ONE WITH THE OTHER. 43 

with the affairs of a local territory and the interests of a dis- 
tinct community, it was impossible but that with the growth 
of the historical element the prophetical also should increase, 
and should, in many respects, become more varied and definite 
in its prospective intimations of the future. 

Prophecy, therefore, being from the very first inseparably 
linked with the plan of grace unfolded in Scripture, is, at the 
same time, the necessary concomitant of sacred history. The 
two mutually act and react on each other. Prophecy gives 
birth to the history ; the history, in turn, as it moves onward 
to its destined completion, at once fulfills prophecies already 
given, and calls forth further revelations. And so far from 
possessing the character of an excrescence, or existing merely 
as an anomaly in the procedure of God toward men, prophecy 
cannot even be rightly understood, unless viewed in relation 
to the order of the divine dispensations, and its actual place 
in history. 

Let it not, however, be inferred from this mutual intercon- 
nection, that prophecy and history are altogether alike in 
nature ; or in such a sense assimilated, that by the rule and 
measure of the one we must determine the import and bearing 
of the other. Such, too often, has been the manner of dealing 
with the subject by those who have perceived and exhibited 
the connection ; as if, on the one side, prophecy could not rise 
above history ; nor, on the other, history be more precise and 
determinate than prophecy. However closely related the two 
are to each other, they still have their own distinctive charac- 
teristics, and through these, their respective ends to serve. 
History is the occasion of prophecy, but not its measure / for 
prophecy rises above history, borne aloft by wings which carry 
it far beyond the present, and which it derives, not from the 
past occurrences of which history takes cognizance, but from 
Him to whom the future and the past are alike known. It is 
the communication of so much of his own supernatural light 
as he sees fit to let dof^n upon the dark movements of history, 
to show whither they are conducting. For the most part, the 
persons who live in the midst of events are the least capable 
of understanding aright the character of their age. But God 



M THE PLACE OF PEOPHECY IN HISTORY, AND THE 

is elevated above it, and, by the word of propliecy, lie so 
informs the minds of his people in respect to the end that they 
come also to know better than they could otherwise have done 
the beginning and the middle. And as prophecy, from its 
intimate connection with history, has its regular progress and 
development, there are two considerations that ought not to 
be forgotten in any attempts to ascertain its proper nature and 
import. The one is, that the meaning of a prophecy is not to 
be restrained and limited by conclusions deduced simply from 
the historical circumstances out of which it may have sprung, 
but from the words of the prophecy itself; since the circum- 
stances only prompt and fashion the words, but by no means 
hold them restricted within the same compass. And along 
with this there is the farther consideration, that since pro- 
phecy has God, and not history, for its author — has only been 
conceived in the lap of history, but not properly produced by 
it — it must ever have in it something divinely rich and great, 
reacliing not only beyond the things presently existing, but 
also, it may be, beyond what even with the help of these it 
might be possible beforehand adequately to conceive.* 

2. These remarks, however, only touch the more obvious and 
formal part of the connection of prophecy with history. The 
connection goes much further and deeper. For we observe, 
secondly, that the sacred history itself has throughout inter- 
mingled with it a prophetic element. JSTot only is it to be 
viewed as the germinant soil out of which predictions were 
ever springing forth, but in the very facts and statements it 
records, predictions, though of a somewhat concealed and gen- 

* In these closing remarks I have adopted thoughts, though not the precise 
words of Delitzsch, in his Bisblisch-Proph. Theologie, p. 184, where he opposes 
the view of Hofmann, that history must be made the measure and rule of prophecy. 
See also Hengstenberg's Christology, vol iv, p. 388, Eng. Trans., who justly says, 
that the weak point in the early orthodox view was to be found in its comparative 
disregard of the connection between history and prophecy, which, on the other 
side^ rationalism has pushed to excess. He also states, and justly, that care must 
be taken to maintain the connection so as not to loselcight of the essential charac- 
teristics of prophecy, (after the fashion, for example, of Hofmann,) and that features 
are still occasionally met with in some of the prophetic delineations (as in the 
mention by Micah of Bethlehem as the birthplace of Messiah) which it is scarcely 
possible to account for by any known historical circumstances of the time. 



ORGANIC CONNECTION OF THE ONE WITH THE OTHER. 45 

eral kind, lie imbedded. The historical transactions of Scrip- 
ture are part of a great plan, which stretches from the fall of 
man to the final consummation of all things in glor j ; and in 
60 far as they reveal the mind of God toward man, they carry 
a respect to the future not less than to the present. Their 
having such a prospective significance rests on the fundamental 
principle, that in his character and purposes God is unchange- 
ably the same ; so that, seeing the end from the beginning, and 
planning all with infinite wisdom, as parts of a progressive and 
consistent whole, the truths embodied in the transactions of one 
period necessarily retained their efiicacy, and reappeared in the 
corresponding transactions of another. Hence the freedom, 
and the frequency also, with which prophecy, in its delineations 
of the future, serves itself of the antecedent facts and charac- 
ters of history. As, to point only to a few examples out of 
many, when the Psalmist announces in Psa. ex a royal priest 
after the order of Melchizedek, which implied that the rela- 
tions of Melchizedek's time and person should somehow revive 
again in the future ; or when, by a mode of representation 
common to all the prophets, the successive stages of Israel's 
history are described as experiences once more to be under- 
gone. (Hos. ii ; Ezek. iv, xx, etc.) Hence, too, the use per- 
petually made by the apostles of the notices of patriarchal 
and Israelitish history, as a kind of preparatory exliibition of 
the truths and relations of the Gospel, (Kom. iv, 4, 17 ; 1 Cor. 
v, 1-11 ; Rev. iv, 1-6, etc. ;) and by our Lord himself, who so 
often appears retracing the footsteps of his forefathers after the 
flest — re-echoing from his own bosom the recorded utterances 
of their faith and hope — and appropriating to himself the words 
that had been addressed to them of counsel and encouragement. 
(Matt, iv, 1-10 ; Luke xxiii, 46, etc.) 

Nor is even this the whole ; for the more important and 
characteristic features of the ancient dispensation, the erection 
of the tabernacle in the wilderness, with its complicated ritual 
of worship, the conquest and possession of Canaan, the insti- 
tution of the earthly kingdom, and the building of the temple 
on Mount Zion, what are they all but so many prophetic forms' 
and symbols of things to come ? In themselves they were but 



46 THE PLACE OF PROPHECY IN HISTORY, AND THE 

imperfect and provisional means, incapable from their very na- 
ture of reacliing tlieir proper end, and ever, in a manner, 
proclaiming tlie necessity of a higher order of things to sub- 
stantiate and perfect their design. And so, when the higher 
things actually came, when Christ's work and kingdom entered 
among men, they did not assume the aspect of something abso- 
lutely new, but appeared rather as the natural result and com- 
pletion of the old, the working out of the plan of God in 
accordance with its divine and spiritual nature, and establish- 
ing it on its immovable foundations. 

Indeed, it is as true of the history as of the prophecy of Old 
Testament Scripture, that it points to the incarnation and work 
of Christ for man's redemption as its great terminating object. 
There alone it finds its proper explanation and its adequate 
result. It unfolds modes of procedure on the part of God, and 
experiences on the part of his people, which, in respect to that 
ulterior event, are all anticipative and preparatory ; since in 
them God was ever manifesting himself under the limits and 
conditions, sometimes also in the form of humanity, for the 
purpose of saving men from the evils and dangers of sin ; while 
yet the salvation, which might effectually and forever accom- 
plish this, it never reached, and remains still an object of desire 
and hope. Those divine theophanies, therefore, with the human 
experiences of grace and redemption connected with them, 
from the walking of God in Eden, when he came to reveal the 
purpose of salvation, to the last appearances of the angel of the 
covenant to counsel and comfort the released exiles of Baby- 
lon, the whole of these, when rightly understood, are so many 
converging lines that meet in the God-man and his redemptive 
work as their common center. They are a prophecy in action 
of that personal union of the divine and human in Christ, by 
which alone the gulf between God and man could be closed, 
and the breath of a new and higher life infused into the fallen. 
Yiewed apart from this consummating process, they seem like 
the disjointed materials and fragmentary ptrojections of some 
vast building, which cannot attain to proper harmony and 
completeness till the Great Architect comes to finish the work. 
But let them be viewed, as they should be, in their relation 



ORGANIC CONNECTION OF THE ONE WITH THE OTHER. 47 

and subservience to what was to come, and then they will be 
seen to give evidence throughout of the presiding agency of 
God, planning and directing all with infinite skill, so as to ren- 
der the past a suitable and growing preparation for the future, 
and present in the antecedent history of redemption the prelude 
of redemption itself. But for this redemption, foreseen and 
contemplated by the mind of God, there could as little have 
been such an antecedent history, as there could have been a 
volume of prophecy springing out of it, having for its pervading 
and animating spirit the testimony of Jesus. 

Thus it appears that the Old Testament is in a manner im- 
pregnated with the prophetical element, and not as by caprice 
or accident, but from the very aim and character of its revela- 
tions. The more specific and formal predictions it contains 
do not stand out in solitary grandeur by themselves, like emi- 
nences rising abruptly from a surrounding level ; they are only 
the higher elevations, the occasional mountain-peaks, from 
which the eye of faith was allowed at times to descry more 
clearly the shadows of the coming age. But all around, also, 
there were prospective contrivances and points of contact be- 
tween the present and the future. " As, in a writer of genius, 
his individual great thoughts appear like lilies on the surface 
of the water, groundless and rootless, and yet are sustained by 
one common soil, so also the individual prophets of God's peo- 
ple are not to be regarded as scattered manifestations of the 
Divine Spirit, but rooted in one common soil, namely, in the 
prophetic subsistence of the nation itself and its institutions."* 
Besides, there were occasional arrangements and transactions 
in which the prophetical element assumed a somewhat more 
distinct shape, and which, consequently, held a closer afiinity 
with the announcements of prophecy. Such, for example, 
were the things accomplished in Abraham, as the head of that 
covenant which was to diffuse life and blessing through all the 
families of mankind. Occupying this high position, a position 
that so manifestly linked together the present and the future, 
he was constituted by God, in the truest sense, a representative 
man, in whose calling and course of life there was to be a real 

* Tholuck, Comm. on Hebrews, Diss. i. 



48 THE PLACE OF PROPHECY IN" HISTORY, AND THE 

significance for others down to the latest generations. There, 
as in a glass, the children of the covenant, of every age, were 
to find a prospective exhibition of the things which concerned 
their relation to God ; what they w^ere as children of nature, 
what they become as partakers of grace, what they are called 
to strive after and may justly expect to reach as the heirs of 
blessing. And so again, at a later period, in the case of David, 
who was also the head of the covenant, and, indeed, of the 
same covenant, only made to assume a form more immediately 
adapted to the working out and administration of the blessing. 
All the lines of his eventful history pointed, like prophetic 
signs, to the future, and were by himself employed, tlirough 
the direction of the Spirit, as the materials of many vivid de- 
lineations that liad for their object the person and kingdom of 
Messiah. Daniel's history, too, was in the closest manner 
connected with his prophecy. The one may fitly be regarded 
as a type of the other, and on that account, probably, occupies 
so large a place in his book. The grand aim of the revelations 
imparted to him was to unfold the progress of the kingdom of 
God from deep depression, and through manifold struggles, to 
the supreme place of honor and glory, and the process is 
already imaged in the marvelous rise of Daniel himself from 
the condition of a Hebrew exile to the place of highest power 
and influence at the court of Babylon. In the case also of 
some of the other prophets similar providences were not 
wanting. 

^or, among those prophetical elements and affinities inter- 
woven with the history and institutions of the Old Testament, 
should we omit to notice a class of persons who made a near 
approach to the prophetical order, and might not unfitly be 
designated prophets in action. We refer to the l!Tazarites, who 
in one passage are named along with the prophets, as if there 
were no very marked distinction between them : "And I raised 
up of your sons for prophets, and of your young men for ]^az- 
arites," (Amos ii, 11.) The Nazarites were simply, as the 
name imports, the separated ones, persons who stood apart 
from the mass of the community, as under a special vow or 
act of consecration to the Lord. Individually, and for a set 



ORGANIC CONNECTION OF THE ONE WITH THE OTHER. 49 

time or purpose, they were to give a living exhibition of that 
holy surrender and devotedness to God which should ever have 
been exemplified by the covenant people as a whole. They 
were, therefore, a kind of election within the election. And the 
peculiar restraints and services imposed on them had this alone 
for their object : to present the ^Nazarites as pattern men, 
withdrawn from everything fitted, whether by undue exhilara- 
tion or by mournful sadness, to mar their communion with the 
pure and blessed life of God. According as they abounded in 
Israel, there were to be found among the people so many em- 
bodied lessons or palpable manifestations of that covenant 
faithfulness, which it was always the first part of a prophet's 
calling, as well as the sum of Israel's duty, to illustrate and 
maintain. But it was possible for the ISfazarite to be brought 
into still closer resemblance to the prophet. There might be 
circumstances connected with his vow of separation to the 
Lord which served to mark him out as a special gift of heaven, 
or, in some more peculiar sense, a witness of the truth of God. 
That such was occasionally, at least, the case, may naturally 
be inferred from the language of Amos, in which the Naza- 
rites are mentioned as among the singular proofs furnished by 
God of his goodness to his people. They are also referred to 
by Jeremiah in a way that seems to betoken the high place 
they held among the peculiar lights and instruments of bless- 
ing in Israel. " Her E^azarites," he says, (Lam. iv, Y,) " were 
purer than snow, they were whiter than milk, they were more 
ruddy in body than rubies, their polishing was of sapphire." 
And in two very remarkable cases, those of Samuel and John 
the Baptist, cases in which instruction by action was to go 
hand in hand with that of direct teaching, the obligation ot 
the I^azarite vow was by divine ordination made coeval with 
birth, and associated also with the higher gifts and calling of a 
prophet. 

The most singular example, however, of the whole class, and 
the one that in its simply [N^azaritish character bore most dis- 
tinctly the aspect of a prophecy, is that of Samson, in itself a 
kind of sacred enigma. Not, however, an inexplicable enigma, 

if viewed in relation to the circumstances of the time, and with 

4 



50 THE PLACE OF PEOPHECY IN HISTORY, AND THE 

dne regard to its prophetical character. The time was one of 
backsliding and rebuke. The marvelous story begins imme- 
diately after it has been said that " the children of Israel did 
evil again in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord delivered them 
into the hand of the Philistines forty years." Judges had been 
raised up for their deliverance before, with only a partial and 
temporary success ; for the root of the evil was never properly 
reached. But the Lord now bethought him of trying, as his 
chosen instrument of working, a JS'azarite, wonderful in his 
very birth, and wonderful still more for the singular gift with 
which he was endowed ; yet trying him not solely, nor even 
chiefly, for the purpose of breaking the Philistine yoke, but for 
what was more urgently needed, the imparting of a proper 
insight into God's mind, and awakening a right spirit of de- 
votedness to his fear. It was this which alone could re-estab- 
lish the people in honor and blessing, as the oppression and 
miseries that lay upon them were the result merely of broken 
vows and unfaithful dealing in the covenant of God. And how 
could the requisite instruction be more touchingly and im- 
pressively conveyed to them than by such a marvelous and 
mournful story as presents itself in the life of Samson ? A 
child is supernaturally promised and given, expressly on ac- 
count of the exigency of the times ; the child of a mother laid 
for the occasion under the restrictions of the I^azarite vow, 
and himself appointed to be a l!^azarite from his birth ; one so 
emphatically called to separate himself to the Lord, that to 
every thoughtful mind he must have readily seemed a personi- 
fied Israel, the peculiar representative of a people standing 
under covenant to Jehovah. " The child grew, and the Lord 
blessed him ; and the Spirit of the Lord began to move him at 
times," (Judges xiii, 24, 25 ;) but only it would seem in the 
lower sphere of operations, in the display of supernatural bodily 
might, and the performance of astonishing feats of strength and 
prowess. We can descry through those fitful and terrific 
movements of his early life a zeal glowing in the breast of this 
young Kazarite, capable of daring and accomplishing the 
greatest things. But we watch in vain to see it rising to the 
proper height; it looks more like the earth-sprung zeal of 



ORGANIC CONKECTION OF THE ONE WITH THE OTHER. 51 

patriotism than tliat of a holy and self-denying regard to tlie 
glory of God. Ready to seize on every opportunity to afflict 
the Philistines as enetnies, it burns not against them as the 
servants of idolatry and corruption ; and so, while at one mo- 
ment he rushes on them in his fury, at another he takes them 
to his familiar embrace, and is even bent on having one of their 
daughters for his wife. It was precisely the defect and failing 
of his people. To them, too, collectively belonged a noble 
superiority in outward standing and privilege above their idol- 
atrous neighbors. They were a people of relatively high en- 
dowments, and were bound together by a strong international 
and patriotic spirit. But they lacked the true zeal of God, and 
hence were ever ready to lose sight of what was in itself their 
grand distinction and the foundation of all they possessed of 
good : their divine call to the knowledge and service of Jeho- 
vah. For such a people to lose this was in a manner to lose 
all, since by losing it they necessarily became false witnesses 
of God, and in consequence were surrendered by him to the 
powers of evil, which they should have held in subjection. 

The moral weakness, therefore, which appeared in Samson 
was but a reflection of the hereditary and prevailing evil in 
Israel. And God did with it in the present case as he ever, in 
effect, does with evil of that description when unrighteously 
clung to : he shut it up to a particular channel, allowed it to 
take only that course which might render the example of this 
externally strong but internally feeble !Nazarite a more exact 
and instructive image of the people whom he represented. 
Hence, as one carried away by a resistless impulse, he must go 
to woo and wed among the uncircumcised Philistines, ally him- 
self to the daughter of a strange god, nay, suffer himself to 
become the weak tool of this woman's treachery and caprice, 
Bo as to betray at her solicitation the secret of his strength, and 
part with the symbol of his consecration to God. How light 
did it show him to have made of his heaven-imposed vow of 
separation to the Lord ! And how bitterly was his own meas- 
ure meted back to him, when, after being caught in the toils 
of the deceiver, he was delivered over as a laughing-stock to 
his enemies, and was trodden under foot of men ! There^ in 



52 THE PLACE OF PROPHECY IN HISTORY, AND THE 

black niglit and abject bumiliation, the riddle might have 
ended; it would have ended there if the fall of Israel were 
like the fall of the world, a fall without the hope of recovery. 
But it is not so ; through the loving-kindness and mercy of 
God other things were still in reserve for them. Therefore, 
when the cold winter of desolation had passed over the son of 
Manoah, and amid the shame and wretchedness of his captivity, 
the Nazarite's heart returns to him, the freshness of another 
spring returns along with it ; he again raises himself up in the 
might of a giant, and with one terrible blow brings confusion 
on the pride and glory of his adversaries. An acted prophecy 
throughout ! only in the earlier part bearing more immediate 
respect to the checkered experiences which Israel had been 
made to undergo, and, in the later, to the expectation that 
might still be cherished of a happier future. With the cer- 
tainty of a sign from heaven, it proclaimed that for the seed 
of Israel everything in evil or in good depended upon the part 
they acted in respect to the covenant of God ; and it should 
have been heard by the men of that generation proclaiming 
this the more loudly, as their failure to recognize aright the 
divine mission of Samson, and to stand by him at the outset 
of his career, had manifestly contributed not a little to his fail- 
ure in the work of deliverance he ought to have achieved for 
them. There was hope, however, still, hope in his death ; and 
if their repentings did but kindle together, and their faith 
revive after the manner of his, they might yet ride upon the 
high places of the earth, and do the more valiantly by reason 
of their temporary defeat.* 

This branch of our subject, however, has been pursued far 
enough. We have seen that not a few points of contact exist 

* When the history of Samson is understood in the light presented above, no 
difficulty need be felt about the statement in Judges xiv, 4, that it was of the Lord 
he sought a wife from the Philistines. It was of the Lord in the same sense that 
tlie act of David in numbering Israel was so. (2 Sara, xxiv, 1.) In both cases 
alike, as in many others of a similar kind, there was a wrong bias or disposition 
already working in the soul, sure to take some outward direction in the way of 
evil ; and God so ordered matters as to make it take tliat direction which he saw 
to be the best fitted for discovering its own nature, or subserving the purposes he 
meant to accomplish in connection with it. For another quite parallel case, see 
1 Kings xii, 15. 



OEGANIC CONNECTION OF THE ONE WITH THE OTHER. 53 

between the prophecy of Scripture and its history ; and how 
naturally, how necessarily even, the one grows out of the other, 
and how closely in se^^eral respects it is interwoven with it. 
So that while there are specific differences it is impossible but 
that there must also be general agreements, and particularly in 
regard to the place they respectively hold in the great plan of 
God's moral government. Prophecy and history alike occupy 
but different provinces in the evolution of this divine plan — • 
provinces that continually overlap and interpenetrate one an- 
other ; and the relation they bear to it is the aspect in which 
both should always be primarily and chiefly contemplated. 
Their common and more direct object is to make known God's 
purposes of grace and principles of dealing toward men ; the 
one by narration of the past, the other by connecting the past 
with the future. 



64: THE PEOPER SPHERE OF PROPHECY — THE CHURCH. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE PROPER SPHERE OF PROPHECY — THE CHURCH.* 

By the sphere of prophecy we mean the parties for whom it 
was directly given, and the objects it more immediately con- 
templated. The subject is very closely connected with the 
topics which have already been discussed, and the correct view 
may be said to be involved in the preceding remarks. But it 
is a matter of too much moment to be settled merely by impli- 
cation ; the more especially as conclusions naturally flow from 
it, which ought to exercise an important bearing on the inter- 
pretation of prophecy. 

It is of prophecy i^ the stricter sense that we now speak, 
prophecy as containing pre-intimations of things to come ; not 
only a distinct branch, but the most special and peculiar branch 
of God's communications to men. This alone determines it to 
have been, in its leading aim and object, for the behoof of the 
Church. If, in its other aspects, prophesying was "not for 
them that believe not, but for them that believe," (1 Cor. xiv, 
22,) it must have been so more especially in this ; only in an 
incidental and remote manner could it have been intended to 
bear upon those without. For it was the revelation of the 
Lord's secret in regard to the future movements of his provi- 
dence, which belongs peculiarly to them that fear him. (Psa. 
XXV, 14.) Not such a revelation, however, for the purpose of 
gratifying the curiosity of those who might seek needlessly to 
pry into the future, but for the higher end of furnishing, espe- 
cially in times of darkness and perplexity, the light that might 
be required for present faith and duty. It is not God's com- 
mon method, nor indeed would it be consistent with his wis- 

* The term Church is used here as a convenient expression for the community 
of the faithful, without reference to its formal organization, and also without respect 
to time ; consequently of that community before as well as after Christ. 



THE PKOPER SPHERE OF PROPHECY — THE CHURCH. 65 

dom, to lay open his hidden counsel respecting things destined 
to come to pass, even to the children of his covenant : for snch 
kaowledge, if imparted with any measure of fullness and pre- 
cision, would be a most dangerous possession, and would inev- 
itably tend to destroy the simplicity of their trust in God, and 
beget an unhealthy craving after human calculations and 
worldly expedients. It is only, therefore, within certain limits, 
or in cases that may be deemed somewhat exceptional, that 
God can grant, even to his chosen, a prophetical insight into 
fature events. In so far as this may be needful to awaken or 
sustain hope in times of darkness and discouragement, to inspire 
confidence in the midst of general backsliding and rebuke, at 
the approach of imminent danger to the life of faith, to give 
due intimation of the brooding evil, at such times and for such 
purposes, God's merciful regard to the safety and well-being of 
his people may fitly lead him to provide them with an occa- 
sional and partial disclosure of the future ; but the same regard 
would equally constrain him to withhold it when not necessary 
for the moral ends of his government. 

Apparent exceptions to this view present themselves in the 
cases of Balaam and Daniel, both of whom primarily disclosed 
to the enemies of God's kingdom the things destined to come 
to pass. Both, however, occupied a kind of exceptional posi- 
tion. They stood apart, not only from the prophetical order of 
men in Israel, but also from the common affairs of the Church. 
Hence the writings of Daniel, notwithstanding their high 
prophetical character, have had a place assigned them in the 
Jewish canon distinct from the writings of strictly prophetical 
men. But in regard to the point immediately before us, the 
grounds of exception are more apparent than real. For in the 
case of both Balaam and Daniel it was mainly for the light and 
encouragement of the Church that the word of prophecy came 
by them ; only the circumstances of the times were such as to 
render the camp of the enemy the most appropriate watch- 
tower, where it should have been received and primarily made 
known. At both periods Israel had come into direct collision 
with the kingdoms of the world ; in the one case as a new, in 
the other as a small and shattered power, standing over against 



56 THE PROPER SPHERE OF PROPHECY — THE CHURCH. 

others of miglity prowess, and, as might seem, of all-prevailing 
energy. The subject for anxious thought and consideration 
then was not, as usually with the prophets, Israel in its relation 
to the worldly powers, but rather the worldly powers in their 
relation to Israel.* The providence of God had ordered mat- 
ters so as, for the time, to give these powers the predominant 
rank in the world's affairs ; and it was meet that the word 
which announced the evanescence of their glory, and their ulti- 
mate subjection to the kingdom of God, should proceed from a 
divine seer on their own territory. There was thus extracted 
from the domain of the earthly a testimony on behalf of the 
spiritual and divine. And to render the witness still more 
striking and impressive, it was ordered in the latter of the two 
cases referred to that Nebuchadnezzar, the head and repre- 
sentative of the worldly kingdom, should, by receiving a divine 
dream himself, herald the final downfall of the one, and the 
eternal ascendency of the other. (Chap, ii.) The actual revela- 
tion, however, came from Daniel, the representative at Babylon 
of the divine kingdom ; and though the general outline of the 
future was presented in his interpretation of N^ebuchadnezzar's 
dream, yet the more inward and special delineation of the 
respective natures of the earthly and the heavenly kingdoms, 
of the relations that were to subsist between the two, of the 
deathlike struggles through which, both in the nearer and the 
more distant future, the kingdom of God was to make its way 
to a secure position and a universal dominion ; all this, which 
forms the great burden of Daniel's prophecies, (chap, vii-xii,) 
and which it was his more especial calling to disclose, was 
given through him directly for the support and encouragement 
of the Church, amid the deep depression and gloom which both 
then and afterward hung around her condition. Here also, 
therefore, the general principle holds, that prophecy, as the 
revelation of things to come, in all its leading phases, is God's 
communication to the Church ; and that for spiritual ends — for 
the especial purpose of preparing and fitting her for the more 
trying emergencies of a struggling and perplexed condition. 
1. And this, first of all, accounts quite naturally for the 
* See Auberlen's "Der Prophet Daniel und die Ofifenbarung Johannes," p. 22. 



THE PKOPER SPHERE OF PROPHECY — THE CHURCH. 57 

very unequal and apparently irregular distribution of prophecy. 
Being intended, in its more immediate aim, to counsel and 
direct the Church in respect to evils in her condition too 
great for ordinary light and privilege, it was fitly made to vary 
both in form and quantity, according to the exigencies of the 
times. Hence, prophetic revelations were much longer con- 
tinued and more widely diffused in the earlier ages of the 
Church's history than now ; for believers then possessed so im- 
perfect an insight into the scheme and pui-poses of God, that 
they required more full and frequent glimpses into the future 
to sustain their faith and guide their course of procedure. 
Hence also, when toward the close of the Theocracy, error and 
corruption became unusually prevalent and strong ; when, on 
account of these, it was necessary to allow a cloud of darkness 
to settle upon the outward position and prospects of the 
Church, and everything began to wear a frowning aspect ; it 
was then more especially that the spirit of prophecy needed to 
multiply, and that it actually did multiply its announcements, 
pouring in rays of heaven's light amid nature's gloom, and doing 
60 the more as the gloom became deeper, and difficulties thick- 
ened around the walk of faith. In perfect accordance with 
this more immediate and special design of prophecy, not only 
are there comparatively few prophetic delineations in ^ew 
Testament Scripture, but the portions which more peculiarly 
belong to this class (namely, our Lord's predictions respecting 
the destruction of Jerusalem and the end of the world, St. Paul's 
description of the great apostasy, and the mystic visions 
of alternate suffering and triumph in the Apocalypse) all 
proceed on the anticipation of distressing and perilous 
times to the Church, and are obviously designed to provide 
her beforehand with the necessary materials of light and 
comfort.* 

* In what has now been stated regarding prophecy, we have a ready explana- 
tion of a notice in New Testament history, as this notice, in turn, incidentally con- 
tirms the statement just made. In Acts iv. 36, the surname of Barnabas, given to 
the good Levite, Joseph, is explained as meaning "sou of consolation," {vibc 
7rapa/cAr/CTccjf,) while more strictly it is "son of prophecy," (nx^^p "l!2j. It im- 
plied that prophecy, in its primary and loading design, was what we have repre- 
sented, the light and comfort of the Church in her times of trouble and perplexity. 



58 THE PKOPEE SPHEPvE OF PEOPHECY — THE CHUKCH. 

"Now, since this is the primary design of prophecy in its 
more specific announcements, since in these it has respect 
more immediately to the Chnrch of God, and speaks pecnliarly 
for her direction and support in times of danger or distress, it 
is clear we shonld not expect prophecy to be framed as if its 
argumentative value were the main service it was intended to 
render. Whatever it may be fitted to yield of this description, 
is rather to be regarded as an incidental result than its direct 
and proper aim. It speaks, for the most part, in a tone of con- 
fidence and sympathy, as to those who should be disposed to 
receive and profit by the communications it addressed to them, 
not with a view to meet on the field of controversy persons on 
the search for weapons of assault against the truth of God. 
The moral position of such persons is entirely wrong ; and it is 
only what might be expected, that various things respecting 
prophecy and its fulfillment should afibrd ground for doubt or 
cavil to t/iem^ which appear full of light and satisfaction to the 
children of God. The eye of the one class is evil, and so 
abides in darkness ; while in the other it is single, and receives 
in simplicity the testimony of truth. 

2. The same consideration, which accounts for the somewhat 
in*egular distribution of prophecy, also serves to explain a pe- 
culiarity, which not unfrequently appears in the form of its an- 
nouncements. This peculiarity consists in the minatory aspect 
given to many predictions which are really pregnant with 
blessing ; or their indirectly announcing good to the Church, by 
directly denouncing evil upon the adversary. In all cases of 
this sort it is the relation implied or indicated between the two 
parties which determines the form of the prediction ; this be- 
ing such as to render the infliction of evil on the one necessary 
to the accomplishing of deliverance for the other. Every such 
prediction, therefore, is in truth a word of promise addressed 
to the Church, assuring her, under covert of the spoliation or 
defeat of the enemies of her peace, of her own coming safety 
or enlargement. 

And had prophecy been viewed more in this scriptural aspect, jand less as a weapon 
of defense against unbelievers, the explanation of this name would have appeared 
more easy and natural than it has usually done. 



THE PKOPER SPHERE OF PROPHECY — THE CHURCH. 59 

The very first promise belongs to this category. It assumes 
in both its parts the form of a threatening : a threatening of 
partial injury to be brought on the woman's seed by the seed 
of the tempter, and of the utter destruction of the tempter's 
seed by that of the woman. In itself a most significant fact, 
and indicating from the outset how necessarily and how much 
the salvation of an elect Church was to proceed by the aveng- 
ing of evil, and the overthrow of an adverse power ! In the 
same light are we to view the denunciations of coming judg- 
ment and desolation, which in the later prophets are so often 
given forth against Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, and other heathen 
kingdoms. The relation in which these powers stood at the 
time to the Church of God, as her dangerous rivals or cruel op- 
j)ressorbj made it impossible to give her the promise of good 
she needed without at the same time foretelling their coming 
ruin ; for it was only by the fall of the one that the other could 
rise to the ascendant. Even the more particular and detailed 
representations of Daniel respecting the successive monarchies 
of the world had the same ultimate design ; the terminating 
point of his visions (as we have already stated) was to impress 
upon the minds of believing men the temporary nature of the 
earthly, under every phase it might assume, and with what- 
ever weapons it might arm itself; its destination still was, to 
pass away, that the heavenly might remain, l^or is it other- 
wise in the case of the Apocalyptic sketches in the 'New Testa- 
ment. The plagues of judgment, the vials of wrath, the woes, 
calamities, and desolations, with which they so greatly abound, 
are all of the nature of promises to the party more properly 
contemplated by the prophetic spirit ; for the revelation they 
contain of the world's doom is given for the especial purpose 
of enabling the Church to reckon on her abiding security and 
final triumph. They are but another form of the message, 
" Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God." 

3. It is of more importance, however, to notice another point 
connected with the revelations of prophecy, and which is also 
a simple deduction from the view under consideration, of its 
more immediate purpose and design. From the relation of 
prophecy to the Church, a very large portion of its announce-* 



60 THE PROPER SPHERE OF PROPHECY — THE CHURCH. 

ments naturally consists of direct promises of good things to 
come ; and addressed, as these necessarily are, to the Chnrch 
in the strictest sense, they can only be expected to meet with 
fulfillment in so far as the Church is true to her calling, or in 
the experience of the Church as composed of sincere and faith- 
ful members of the covenant. It could not be otherwise if 
prophecy really is what we have found it to be, the more 
special and peculiar revelation of God's purposes of mercy to 
his people in times of comparative darkness, or peculiar trouble 
and perplexity. In that case, whatever it contained of com- 
fort and encouragement must have been designed for genuine 
believers, for them alone ; because such only are the proper 
subjects of blessing. It were, therefore, to turn prophecy out 
of its proper direction, to draw it into a sphere that does not 
rightfully belong to it, if we should view the promises of bless- 
ing it embodies as bearing respect to men in their natural con- 
dition : if, for example, we should regard them as the settled 
heritage of the Jews, in their simply natural descent and na- 
tional capacity, apart from the spiritual characteristics of the 
Church, or the seed of true believers, which that nation con- 
tained in its bosom. This were, indeed, to invert the relative 
order and position of things ; it were to convert the incidental 
and formal in Israel's condition into the substantive part, leav- 
ing all that is inward and spiritual as a kind of separable 
adjunct. It were to exhibit God's election of Israel to the 
prominent place they held, and their title to divine favor and 
blessing as a thing by itself and for itself, a piece of mysteri- 
ous favoritism, or freak of arbitrary will and power, instead 
of being, as the whole tenor alike of the historical and the pro- 
phetical Scriptures manifests, a concentrated display of his 
principles of truth and grace, in order to work with the greater 
effect upon the world at large.* So far from its being the case 
that the promises in Isaiah and the other prophets were all 
made to the Jews as a nation, it were nearer the truth to say 
that no promises were made to them simply in that capacity. 
The promises in which they were more peculiarly interested 

* See this point more fully treated in "Typology of Scripture," Book n, chap, 
vi, sec 5. 



THE PROPER SPHERE OF PROPHECY — THE CHURCH. 61 

were made to Abraham and his seed ; but to his seed only in 
the sense explained by the apostle ; (Kom. iv, ix ; Gal. iii ;) 
that is, to those who might spring from Abraham's loins, in so 
far, but in so far only, as they stood also in his faith and 
walked in his footsteps ; and along with these to all who 
should possess the same spiritual standing, whether they might 
belong or not to the number of his natural offspring. The 
possession of the spiritual element was thus, in every age, 
stamped as the essential thing, as the vital bond of connection, 
according to the pregnant saying of Augustine : " The faith of 
Abraham is the seed of Abraham," ("Fides Abrahse semen est 
Abrahse," Op. x, p. 2593.) When the lineal descendants failed 
in respect to this, they were not recognized by God as the heirs 
of promise, or as possessed of any title to blessing. They then 
wanted the heart of the parent, which was unspeakably more 
important than bearing his name, or having a portion of his 
blood in their veins. Their condition did not essentially differ 
from that of the heathen. How clearly was this indicated by 
the prophet Isaiah, when, at the beginning of his book, though 
described as " the vision he saw respecting Judah and Jerusa- 
lem," he breaks forth in an address to the existing generation 
as " the rulers of Sodom and the people of Gomorrah !" l^ot 
only had they become like heathens in God's sight, but like that 
portion of the heathen who, from having been pre-eminent in 
guilt, were made also pre-eminent in punishment ; not Abra- 
ham's seed, therefore, in the proper sense, but a generation of 
vipers. In like manner Ezekiel advances it as a specific charge 
against the children of Israel, that they had " brought strangers, 
uncircumcised in heart and uneircumcised in flesh, to be in 
God's sanctuary, to pollute it," (chapter xliv, 7,) describing a 
corrupt priesthood as uncircumcised heathen, because such 
morally was their position in the sight of God. So again Amos, 
in chapter ix, 7, " Are ye not as the children of the Ethiopians 
unto me, O children of Israel? saith the Lord. Have not I 
brought up Israel out of the land of Egypt, and the Philistines 
from Caphtor, and the Syrians from Kir ?" That is, the doing 
of the one, as matters now stand, is to be regarded as entirely 
of a piece with the doing of the other. Since Israel has de- 



62 THE PROPER SPHERE OF PROPHECY — THE CHURCH. 

scended spiritually to a level with, the nations of the earth, the 
removal of their forefathers from Egypt and their settlement 
in the land of Canaan has also become a merely political and 
worldly change, similar to what has occurred among other 
tribes and races of men. It involves no distinctive privilege ; 
it secures no real blessing. The promise is not for persons in 
such a condition, but only for the children of faith, who are the 
proper seed of Abraham. 

The rule for promised blessing, however, does not hold of 
threatened evil. The prophets coald not, in accordance with 
the principles of the divine government, have assured the 
Israelitish people in the mass, and irrespective of their spiritual 
condition, of future good ; but there was nothing to prevent 
the same prophets from threatening the people mth the most 
general and overwhelming judgments. The two cases are 
essentially different. True believers alone are in any case the 
proper subjects of promise ; but sinners of every name are ex- 
posed to the judgments of heaven, and those who have sinned 
as Israel did, against covenant light and engagements, only 
render themselves the heirs of a heavier condemnation. Hence 
the groundlessness of the complaint which is sometimes raised 
concerning the seed of Israel, as if a certain degree of harsh- 
ness were shown them when their connection with the severity 
of God is represented as more marked and general than their 
connection with his goodness, when the prospects of blessing 
unfolded by the prophets are held to have been the heritage 
only of the spiritual portion of the people, while the calamities 
threatened are found to have had a collective and national ful- 
fillment. Such a complaint, if traced to its source, would re- 
solve itself into a dissatisfaction with the principles of the divine 
administration ; since, according to these, individuals or com- 
munities, merely as such, may become the subjects of threat- 
ened evil, there being always enough of sin in the general mass, 
enough even in the better portion, to account for every visita- 
tion of evil that may be sent ; while on the other hand, no 
tokens of the divine favor, no blessing either temporal or eter- 
nal, ca,n be made sure to any, excepting in so far as they be- 
come partakers of the grace and salvation of God. 



THE PROPER SPHERE OF PROPHECY — THE CHURCH. 63 

It is true that the promises of blessing held out to Israel hj 
the prophets are often couched in terms not less comprehensive 
than the threatenings of evil ; thej are addressed to the people 
in their collective capacity, as if all were alike interested in 
them. This arose* from the desire felt by God's servants to 
treat Israel according to their proper ideal, as a people called 
to the knowledge and service of Jehovah, an ideal which they 
were reminded by this very mode of address ought to have 
been realized in the entire community. The same thing pre- 
cisely occurs in IS^ew Testament Scripture. In the epistles 
addressed to particular Churches these are designated accord- 
ing to their Christian profession, as standing in the faith and 
purity of the Gospel, and as so standing have many rich and 
precious promises conveyed to them ; but without prejudice to 
the truth that there might be, nay, not without many indica- 
tions of the fact that there were among them persons who were 
not conformed to the doctrine, and who could have no part in 
the blessing. The principle which underlies one and all of 
these promises is, that as it is Christ who gave them confirma- 
tion for his people, so it is such only as really are his people 
who are entitled to look for their fulfillment. But for those 
who are without the faith of Christ, so far from their having 
an interest in any promises of grace, they still have the wrath 
of God abiding upon them. 

It is proper to add, that the converse of the principle here 
afiirmed respecting the promissory element in the prophecies 
of Scripture, or the positive aspect of the truth it contains, also 
demands consideration, and is, indeed, one on which both the 
comfort of believers and the practical value of the prophetic 
Scriptures greatly depend. I^ on the one hand, the promises 
of future good they disclose are only for the children of faith, 
who constitute the real members of the covenant, on the other 
hand, it is to be remembered, they are for all such. To the 
latest generations, and to the utmost bounds of the world, these 
may claim an interest in them. Not always, indeed, as to the 
mere form of the promised good, (whicli changes with circum- 
stances of place and time,) but invariably as to its saibstance. 
For " the Word of God lives and abides forever ;" if, ;as a word 



64 THE PROPER SPHERE OF PROPHECY — THE CHURCH. 

of blessing, for none 'but the true seed, yet assuredly for all tlie 
seed of every kindred, and tribe, and tongue. Believing gen- 
tiles are tlierefore designated " heirs according to the promise," 
(Gal. iii, 29,) the promise, namely, given originally to Abra- 
ham, and which may justly be said to comprehend every other 
in its bosom. And both our Lord himself and his apostles 
continually recognize and proceed upon the principle, that the 
child of faith, wherever he is, and in whatever region he resides, 
has a personal interest in every word of encouragement and 
hope which has been delivered to the people of God. (Matt, iv, 
4 ; Acts ii, 39 ; 2 Cor. vi, 2 ; Heb. vi, 17, 18, etc.) How could 
it possibly be otherwise ? This Word is the testimony of an 
unchangeable God, the expression of his own unalterable na- 
ture. Distance of space or time, therefore, can make no mate- 
rial alterations respecting it. It is as veritable in its announce- 
ments and as fresh in its spirit for the believer now, as if it 
had been uttered for the first time in his own day, and even 
had come direct to his own ear. So that, on sure and solid 
grounds, which may be said to have their root in the very being 
and character of God, we may afiirm believers of every name 
to be substantially on a footing as regards the Word of promise ; 
to all of them it speaks one language, and lays open to them 
the same inheritance of blessing. 

But the principle which thus binds the individual believer 
of one time with the believer of another, is of course equally 
valid in a collective respect ; it establishes the unbroken con- 
tinuity of the Church, and the essential oneness of her relation 
to the promises of God. These promises have, indeed, to do 
with difierent covenants and successive dispensations, but not 
by any m^eans with diverse Churches, one having a right to this 
and another to that part of its provisions. There is in reality 
but one Church, pei^raded by one organic life, and only so far 
differing at one time from what it was at another as it has had 
to pass through successive stages of development, and to adapt 
itself to circumstances foil of change and progress. Hence, as 
Owen justly remarked in one of the shortest, but at the same 
time one of the most solid and well-digested of his Preliminary 
Dissertations to his " Commentary on the Hebrews," (Exer. vi,) 



THE PEOPEK SPHEKE OF PKOPHECY — THE CHURCH. 65 

"At the coming of the Messiah, there was not one Church taken 
away, and another set np in its room ; but the Church continued 
the same, in those that were the children of Abraham accord- 
ing to the faith. The Christian Church is not another Church, 
but the very same that was before the coming of Christ, having 
the same faith with it, and interested in the same covenant. 
The olive-tree was the same ; only some branches were broken 
and others grafted into it ; the Jews fell, and the gentiles came 
in their room. And this doth and must determine the dif- 
ference between the Jews and Christians about the promises of 
the Old Testament. They are all made unto the Church. 'No 
individual hath any interest in them but by virtue of his mem- 
bership with the Church. This Church is and always was one 
and the same. With whomsoever it remains, the promises are 
theirs ; and that not by application or analogy, but directly 
and properly. They belong as immediately at this day either 
to Jews or Christians as they did of old to any. The question 
is, with whom is this Church, which is founded on the promised 
seed in the covenant ; for where it is there is Zion, Jerusalem, 
Israel, Jacob, the temple of God." * 

4. A still further deduction, and one of much importance to 
the right interpretation of prophecy, remains to be drawn from 
the consideration of its proper sphere and intention. Since 
prophecy is mainly and essentially a revelation of God's mind 
and will to his Church, and that more especially for the direc- 
tion and encouragement of her members in times of darkness 
and perplexity, we may confidently infer that the ethical or 
moral element, not the simply natural, must predominate in its 
announcements respecting the future. It may, and to a certain 
extent must foretell events in Providence with sufficient dis- 
tinctness to enable those who have witnessed or become cogni- 
zant of their occurrence to identify them with its prior intima- 
tions ; for otherwise the Church could never assure herself that 
the hopes and expectations it had awakened in her bosom had 
found their realization. In regard, for example, to the Messiah, 
to whom most of all prophecy was intended to bear witness, it 
was necessary that it should describe him by such marks and 

* See also "Typology of Scripture," vol. i, p. 190, seq., fourth edition. 

5 



66 THE PROPER SPHERE OF PROPHECY — THE CHURCH. 

characteristics as would enable those who waited for his com- 
ing to recognize him when he did come, as the same that had 
been promised to the fathers. In like manner the predictions 
that bore on the destinies of the covenant-people and the hos- 
tile kingdoms around them, must, in order to serve the purposes 
for which they were given, have spoken with sufficient plain- 
ness of the grand results at least concerning each of them, in 
which the course of Providence was to issue. But it could not 
be in any case the mere occurrences themselves, as objects of 
natural curiosity or ordinary facts of history, in respect to which 
they were so announced beforehand, or were afterward to be 
marked as fulfillments of prophecy. For then they should have 
belonged, not to the province of religion, or to the sphere of 
the Church, but to the region of nature and the world. It is 
in the moral element that the Church moves ; and the promi- 
nent point in all prophetic intimations respecting her state and 
destiny must be something of a like kind, something that, in 
one respect or another, tends to exhibit the principles of the 
divine administration in its dealings with men as subjects of a 
moral government. Prophecy, therefore, as has been justly 
said, " is not merely the divination of future events ; these 
events, however important, are but points in the immense map 
of God's designs. It is the weakness of the human mind to 
desire to pry into futurity without a moral aim. God's aim, on 
the contrary, is to raise us above the whirl of passing events, 
and to ^x our attentive gaze on the divine hand which is mov- 
ing all the complicated wheels of Providence :" "^ and moving 
them, it might have been added, for the great end of display- 
ing his moral attributes, and accomplishing the purposes of his 
grace in behalf of his Church and people. Everything in the 
divine plan is subordinate to this, and must also be subordinate 
in the prophetic word, which is but the partial disclosure of 
that plan, before the time has come for its actual evolution in 
Providence. 

If due weight is given to the consideration now advanced, it 
will exercise an important influence on our interpretations of 
prophecy. It will lead us to view everything, not through a 

* "Douglas on the Structure of Prophecj," p. 8. 



THE PROPER SPHERE OF PROPHECY — THE CHURCH. 67 

natural, but through an ethical medium. In the predictions, 
for example, respecting states and kingdoms, it will dispose us 
to look not so much to the land or territory they occupied, or 
the external changes these might undergo, as to the rational 
beings composing them, who alone were proper subjects of a 
moral treatment. Hence, when the predictions took the form, 
as they very commonly did, of denunciations of coming evil, 
they are to be understood more especially of the people whose 
sins had provoked the threatened doom, and qf the territories 
they occupied, only in so far as the external aspect of these 
might be made visibly to reflect the prostrate condition of their 
owners. To have respect to the territories, rather than to the 
people who inhabited them, were to look at the prophecies and 
their fulfillment in a simply natural light. It were to make 
account of the relation in which they stood to the omniscience 
and power of God, but to lose sight of their connection with 
his moral government. This, however, as we have stated, was 
invariably the point of highest moment. The primary question 
was, how the states referred to stood related, now in guilt and 
prospectively in punishment, to the righteousness of heaven. 
"It is not, therefore," to use the words of Arnold, who cor- 
rectly exhibits the general purport of this portion of the 
prophetical Scriptures, " it is not as if the places were accursed 
forever, or as if the language of utter vengeance, which we 
find in prophecy, was applicable to the soil of Mesopotamia or 
Edom ; but the people, the race, the language, the institutions, 
the religion, all that constitutes national personality, are 
passed away from the earth. And if Mesopotamia were to be 
civilized and fertilized to-morrow, and a city with the name of 
Babylon rebuilt, yet it could not be the old Babylon (of Scrip- 
ture,) for that has become extinct forever." Viewed thus, in 
their predominantly moral bearing, such prophecies will be 
found to have met with the fullest verification ; while other- 
wise, as will afterward appear, the verification is at best broken 
and incomplete. 

Nor is this all : for by keeping thus prominently in view 
the moral element in prophecy and its primary destination to 
subserve spiritual interests, we escape from what, more than 



68 THE PROPER SPHERE OF PROPHECY — THE CHURCH. 

anything else, has impoverished much of our prophetical litera- 
tui'e, and we may almost say has stricken it with the curse of 
barrenness, namely, the disposition to treat the subject of 
prophecy merely as a branch of the evidences, and make ac- 
count of nothing but what it contains of the miraculous. 
Somewhat of the miraculous undoubtedly belongs to every 
prophecy of Scripture ; since it necessarily betokens a super- 
natui'al insight into the counsels of Heaven, and a power not 
granted to men in general of penetrating through the vail of 
the future. This, however, is only a part, not the whole ; it is 
not even the more essential and prominent part ; and to isolate 
and magnify it, as if it were alone entitled to regard, is most 
unduly to contract the boundaries of the field, and leave unex- 
plored its hidden riches. Even in the case of miracles them- 
selves, the too exclusive regard to the miraculous element has 
proved a source of weakness and danger. It has presented 
them to men's view merely on their natural side, apart from 
their moral use as manifestations of the character of God ; has 
treated them, not as themselves integral parts of a revelation, 
but only as emdences of a revelation ; and the natural result 
has been that, being under-estimated by the defenders of the 
faith, they have been all the more rudely disparaged and 
assailed by its opponents. It is, in truth, to use the words of 
Archdeacon Hare, " the theological parallel to the materialist 
hypothesis, that all our knowledge is derived from our senses." * 
The mistake is if possible still worse in regard to prophecy, 
which comes forth as a direct communication from the presence 
of God. When considered merely as a divine act of foresight, 
it is but an evidence of his foreknowledge, which, even in its 
highest exercise, is still only a natural attribute, standing in no 
necessary connection with spiritual aims and purposes. But 
what, if not to exliibit these, is the great design of all the reve- 
lations of Scripture ? They are given to tell, not that God is, 
but what he is ; what in the features of his character, in the 
principles of his government, in his purposes of mercy or of 
judgment toward men. So that to contemplate the revelations 
of prophecy in their relation merely to the divine foresight, is 

* "Mission of the Comforter," p. 354. 



THE PROPER SPHERE OF PROPHECY — THE CHURCH. 69 

to view them apart from what has ever been the higher aim of 
God's formal communications to men. And not only so, but 
the further error is naturally fallen into of expecting prophecy 
to be more full and explicit in its announcements regarding 
future events, than from its inherent nature and immediate 
uses it could properly be. Valued only for the evidences it 
contains of divine foresight, a mode of interpretation is in dan- 
ger of being adojDted which, in its craving for specific predic- 
tions, would confound the characteristics of prophecy and 
history. How far this has actually been the case will appear 
when we come to treat of the proper style and diction of 
prophecy. 



70 THE EELATION OF PEOPHECT TO 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE EELATION OF PEOPHECY TO MEK'S EESPONSIBILITIES, WITH 
A CONSIDEEATION" OF THE QUESTION", HOW FAE IT IS ABSO- 
LUTE OE CONDITIONAL IN" ITS ANNOUNCEMENTS. 

Feom the proper sphere of prophecy, we pass to the considera- 
tion of its proper bearing on those whom it respects, as to their 
personal liberty of thought and action, their obligations and 
prospects. It indicates the future. Is the future in every case 
absolutely determined by it ? Or, is room still left after it has 
uttered its declarations for human freedom to work, and accord- 
ing to the nature of the working, to give a corresponding turn 
to its prospective announcements ? In a word, is it the charac- 
teristic of prophecy to make known certainly and conclusively 
what is to come to pass ? Or, are its revelations to some extent 
conditional, depending on the line of conduct that may mean- 
while be pursued by those to whom they are addressed ? 

This is a point of some moment for the right understanding 
of considerable portions of the prophetical Scriptures, and one 
that has called forth the most contradictory opinions. The 
diversity, however, has arisen more from the intermingling of 
philosophical and doctrinal elements with the discussion of the 
question, than from any darkness or uncertainty necessarily 
attaching to the grounds and principles on which the solution 
should be based. For the question here is not, as it has too 
often been considered, whether the definite prediction and 
consequently clear foreknowledge or certain determination of 
the future actions of men be compatible with their moral free- 
dom ; which may be admitted without ever touching the more 
noticeable peculiarities belonging to the present subject, and 
must indeed be admitted by all who receive in simplicity the 
statements of Scripture, however impossible they may find it to 
harmonize the respective spheres of the human and the divine 



MEN'S RESPOKSIBILITIES. 71 

in the matter, and adjust their concurrent agencies. !N^or, again, 
is the proper question here, whether any fixed purpose and 
determination of God is liable to be changed by the contingent 
procedure of men ; for in that respect the truth, founded in 
God's eternal nature, stands fast forever : " He is not man, that 
he should lie ; nor the son of man, that he should repent." The 
question rather is, whether prophecy, viewed simply as a word 
spoken in behalf of God by one class of men to another, ought 
to be regarded as announcing what is fixed and conclusively 
determined by God — ^his irreversible decrees ? Or, whether it 
should not to some extent, and if in some, then to what extent, 
be viewed as the proclamation of God's mind respecting his 
future dealings, on the supposition of the parties interested 
standing in a certain relationship to his character and govern- 
ment. In this last case the word might assuredly be expected 
to take efiect, in so far as the relations contemplated in the 
prophecy continued ; but in the event of a change enteriug in 
the one respect, then a coiTcsponding change in the other 
might reasonably be looked for. Such is the real question at 
issue among those who concur in holding the word of prophecy 
to be a supernatural disclosure of God's mind and will ; and to 
diverge to other, however closely related points, is only to em- 
barrass the discussion with what does not strictly belong to it. 

]^ow, to say nothing for the present of the theologians of 
former times, there are two classes of writers on prophecy in 
the present day who assume nearly opposite positions on the 
point before us. On the one side may be named Kuster and 
Olshausen, holding that all prophecies are more or less condi- 
tional. Thus, on Matthew xxiv, we find Olshausen saying, 
" As everything future, even that which proceeds from the free- 
dom of the creature, when viewed in relation to the divine 
knowledge, can only be regarded as necessary / so everything 
future, as far as it concerns man, can only be regarded as con- 
ditional upon the use of this freedom. As obstinate persever- 
ance in sin hastens destruction, so genuine repentance may 
avert it. This is illustrated in the Old Testament in the 
propliet Jonah, by the history of Nineveh ; and intimated in 
the New Testament by Paul, when, like Abraham praying for 



72 THE RELATION OF PROPHECY TO 

Sodom, lie described the elements of good existing in the world 
as exercising a restraint upon the judgments of God, (2 Thess. 
ii, 7;) and in the second epistle of Peter, the delay of the 
Lord's coming is viewed as an act of long-suffering, designed to 
afford men space for repentance. Accordingly," he adds, 
" when the Kedeemer promises the near approach of his com- 
ing, this announcement is to be taken with the restriction, (to 
be understood in connection with all predictions of judgments,) 
' All this will come to pass, unless men avert the wrath of God 
by sincere repentance.' J^one of the divine predictions are 
bare historical proclamations of what is to take place ; they are 
alarums calling men to repentance, of which it may be said, 
that they announce something for the very purpose that what 
is announced may not come to pass." 

The same principle must, of course, be held equally to apply 
to predictions containing intimations of coming good, only 
with this difference, that these are understood to be made for 
the express purpose of aiding in the accomplishment of what is 
announced, by their tendency to influence human wills in the 
right direction, yet without securing either this or their own- 
realization by any rule of imperious necessity. The principle, 
however, is rejected by Hengstenberg, who may be taken as 
the highest representative of the counter-mode of interpreta- 
tion. He says, " Beyond all doubt, when the prophet denounces 
the divine judgments, he proceeds on the assumption that the 
people will not repent ; an assumption which he knows from 
God to be true. Were the people to repent, the prediction 
would fail ; but because they will not, it is uttered absolutely. 
It does not follow, however, that the prophet's warnings and 
exhortations are useless. These serve ' for a witness against 
them ; ' and, besides, amid the ruin of the mass, individuals 
might be saved. Yiewing prophecies as conditional predic- 
tions nullifies them. The Mosaic criterion (Deut. xviii, 22) 
that he was a false prophet, who should predict things ' which 
followed not nor came to pass,' would then be of no value, since 
recourse might always be had to the excuse that the case had 
been altered by the not ftdfilling of the condition. The fear of 
introducing fatalism, if the prophecies are not taken in a condi- 



MEN'S RESPONSIBILITIES. 73 

tional sense, is unfounded; for God's omniscience, his fore- 
knowledge, does not establish fatalism ; and from omniscience 
simply is the prescience of the prophets to be derived. The 
prophets feel themselves so closely united to God, that the 
words of Jehovah are given as their own, and that to them is 
often ascribed what God does, which proves their own con- 
sciousness to have been entirely absorbed into that of God." 
(Art. " Prophecy," in Kitto's Cyclopedia.) These two forms of 
representation may both be characterized as somewhat extreme, 
and neither of them can be applied to the actual interpretation 
of the prophetic Scriptures, without coming at many points in- 
to conflict with the undoubted facts of the case. In particular, 
one does not see how the ethical element could have been al- 
lowed that scope in prophecy which we have already seen to 
belong to it, unless the historical result had been left in some 
degree dependent on the conduct of those to whom the prophecy 
should come ; since such persons might be, and often actually 
were, as much the subjects of morah treatment in respect to 
the announcements of prophecy, as in respect to the commands 
of law or the provisions of grace. The case alone of N^ineveh 
under the preaching of Jonah puts it beyond a doubt, that such 
a conditional element as we suppose might find a place in the 
domain of prophecy, l^ever did its intimations of coming evil 
assume a more definite and pointed form, than when Jonah 
proclaimed in the streets of that great city, that in forty days 
it should be overthrown. And yet, by operating in the way of 
moral suasion on the hearts of the people, the predicted event did 
not take place ; in other words the prophecy, notwithstand- 
ing its apparent absoluteness, was found to have in it a latent 
conditionality. Precisely similar was the case of Hezekiah in 
his sickness. The prophet Isaiah came to him with a formal 
message, " Thus saith the Lord, Set thine house in order, for 
thou shalt die and not live." Yet, on account of the deep hu- 
miliation and earnest prayer of Hezekiah, the word was re- 
called, and a prolongation of life granted to him. Tlie Mosaic 
criterion, interpreted after the method of Ilengstenberg, and 
applied to such cases, would inevitably lead to the conclusion 
that there had been no true prophecy. And if the supposition 



74 THE RELATION OF PROPHECY TO 

of a conditional principle inhering in the natnre and design of 
prophecy might occasionally afford some excuse to a mere pre- 
tender for evading the condemnation due to him on the 
failure of his prediction ; might even sometimes render it a 
matter of donbt, how far a prediction really divine should be 
expected to meet with a fulfillment according to its terms ; on 
the other hand, the absolute rejection of such a principle can 
have no other result than that of excluding from the rank of 
genuine predictions a considerable portion of the prophetic 
word, and also of most unduly contracting the ethical import 
and bearing of prophecy. Its specific character as a predic- 
tion — the merely natural element in it — would thereby become 
its only appreciable quality. 

The chief error, we conceive, in these conflicting views re- 
specting prophecy is the disposition they exhibit to generalize 
too far, to extend to the whole prophetical field principles that 
are applicable only to a portion of it. There is need here for 
a measure of discrimination, as prophecy in regard to the 
greater or less absoluteness of its terms must materially depend 
upon the kind of subjects it embraces, and the relations amid 
which it moves. An exact classification, however, is impossi- 
ble, on account of the concrete character of its prospective de- 
lineations, and the readiness with which these in their diverse 
aspects run into each other. But one can without difficulty 
trace out a few broad and easily recognized distinctions, which, 
for all practical purposes, may be held to be sufficient. 

1. There is, first, a class of prophecies, the direct and proper 
object of which is to disclose God's purposes of grace to men, 
and indicate in its grander outlines their appointed course of 
development. As the ultimate ground of these purposes is 
plainly in God himself, and the bringing of them into ac- 
comphshment is emphatically his work, it is evident that, in 
respect to this hne of things, there can be no room for the ope- 
ration of any conditional element, except in regard to the sub- 
ordinate relations of place and time. Whether to be sooner or 
later in effecting the results aimed at, whether to be effected in 
this particular mode or in some other that might be conceived, 
in such things, as the plan of God necessarily comes into «on- 



MEN'S KESPONSIBILITIES. 75 

tact with earthly relations and human agencies, it must presup- 
pose a certain adaptation in the state of the world and the 
conduct of individual men. Hence, in these respects announce- 
ments might be made at one time, which, as seen from a hu- 
man point of view, appeared to have undergone a relative 
change at another ; but the things themselves, and all that es- 
sentially concerns their history and progressive operation in the 
world, being entirely and absolutely of God, must proceed in 
strict accordance with the intimations he gives of his mind 
respecting them. 

As examples of this great class of prophecies, we point to the 
original announcement of salvation by the triumph of the 
woman's seed over that of the tempter ; to the promise given 
to Abraham that through his seed all the families of the earth 
should be blessed ; to the successive limitations made as to the 
fulfillment of this promise in its main provisions, by its special 
connection with the tribe of Judah, the house of Da\dd, and a 
virgin-bom son of that house ; to the representations made of 
this glorious Being himself, of the constitution of his person, 
the place of his birth, the nature and circumstances of his 
career on earth, the character of his government, the final 
results and glories of his kingdom, with the opposite destinies 
of those who might set themselves in array against it. In 
regard to all that in this respect was purposed in the divine 
mind, and announced from time to time in the prophetic word, 
there could be no room for any such conditional element as 
might in the least affect the question whether they should act- 
ually come to pass or not ; for they were matters entering into 
the very core of the divine administration, and indissolubly 
linked to the great principles on which from the first all was 
destined to proceed. As concerns them, we have simply to do 
with the omniscience of God in foreseeing, his veracity in de- 
claring, and his overruling providence in directing what should 
come to pass. 

Still, even in this class of prophecies, as they do not proceed 
to their accomplishment in a lofty isolation from human inter- 
ests and responsibilities, so the things belonging to them must 
be presented to men's view as capable of being expedited or 



76 THE RELATION OF PROPHECY TO 

retarded by the line of behavior thej pursue ; and while mth 
God himself the end was seen from the beginning, and abso- 
lutely determined, yet particular issues might fitly enough 
appear to be suspended on the particular condition of the 
Church or the world, precisely as in men's individual relation 
to the grace of God, some are spoken of as subserving, and 
others as frustrating it, though as contemplated from the 
divine point of view, grace must always be regarded as reach- 
ing its end. Thus, to refer to the predictions mentioned in the 
extract from Olshausen, those respecting the second advent of 
the Lord, there can be no doubt that (however definitely fixed 
in the counsels of Heaven) certain things among men are rep- 
resented as tending on the one side to hinder, on the other to 
forward its approach. Our Lord in one of his parables (Luke 
xviii, 1-8) speaks as if it hung on the steadfast faith and perse- 
vering prayer of his elect people. St. Peter uses still stronger 
language : he exhorts believers to a hopeful, godly, and con- 
sistent life, that they might hasten on the day of the Lord's 
coming, (for such is the plain import of his words, Grrevdovrag 
TTjv napovalav rijg rov Qeov rjiiepag^ 2 Pet. iii, 12.) And St. Paul 
not only speaks of a grand development of apostasy necessarily 
preceding the arrival of that day, but of certain things, which 
he does not further characterize, hindering this development, 
and by implication retarding the personal appearance of the 
Lord, which in the chain of providences was to be subsequent 
to the other. Hence the day in question might, in perfect ac- 
cordance with the general design and proper character of 
prophecy, be represented in apostolic times as "near," as 
" drawing nigh," as even " at hand ;" for the Church being 
then in the fall spring-tide of its life and blessing, burning with 
holy zeal for the proper fulfillment of its mission, it might well 
seem as if that mission was hastening to its accomplishment, 
and all things were becoming ready for the final harvest of the 
world. Yet it must have been impossible for any one to read 
with care some of the parables of our Lord, or even what was 
written by St. Paul, of the great apostasy, to say nothing of the 
more lengthened and intricate plan of events prospectively de- 
lineated in the Apocalypse, without coming to the conviction 



MEN'S EESPONSIBILITIES. 7T 

that there was still an implied alternative, namely, that if the 
Church of Christ should degenerate in her course, if she should 
begin to slumber in the work given her to do ; still more, if she 
should become adulterated by the carnal spirit and the corrupt 
practices of the world, then the shadows of the evening should 
need to be lengthened out, and in the tenderness of his forbear- 
ance, as well as for the purposes of trial and judgment, the 
Lord should have to protect the day of his appearing. The Y o^ 
day itself, therefore, was purposely left in concealment ; it re- 
mained among the undiscovered secrets of the Godhead, and 
nothing more than probable and proximate signs were given 
of its approach, as of an event to be ever expected and looked 
for, yet never, as to the period of its actual occurrence, to be 
certainly foreknown. 

Another, and in some respects more palpable example of the 
relative yet quite partial and subordinate dependence of this 
class of prophecies on the actual course of events in the world, 
may be found in the predictions bearing on the divine purpose 
to connect the peculiar blessing for mankind with the royal 
house of David. The appointment in favor of that house to 
bear rule among men, and bestow upon them life and blessing, 
was irrevocably fixed from the time that Nathan delivered to 
David the prophecy contained in 2 Sam. vii, 5-17. On that 
prophecy as a sure foundation, a whole series of predictions 
began to be announced, in which the eye of faith was pointed 
to the bright visions in prospect, and in particular, to the 
child of promise, in whom the succession from David's loins 
was to terminate, and who was to reign forever over the 
heritage of God. But while the appointment itself was abso- 
lute, and the original prophecy was so far of the same charac- 
ter that it indicated no suspension of the sovereignty of David's 
house, or actual break in the succession to his throne, David 
himself knew perfectly that there was an implied condition 
which might render such a thing possible, and that the proph- 
ecy behoved to be read in the light of those great principles 
which pervade the whole of the divine economy. Hence, in 
addition to all he had penned in his psalms, he gave forth in 
his dying testimony, for the special benefit of his seed, a de- 



78 THE EELATION OF PROPHECY TO 

scription of the ruler sucli as tlie word of promise contemplated, 
and such as ought to have been at least generally realized in 
those who occupied the throne of his kingdom, " He that ruleth 
over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God." 2 Sam. 
xxiii, 3. Not only so, but in his last and still more specific 
charge delivered to his immediate successor on the throne, he 
expressly rested his expectation of the fulfillment of the cove- 
nant made with him on the faithful adherence of those who 
should follow him to the law and testimony of God. For after 
enjoining Solomon to walk in the ways and keep the statutes 
of God, he adds as a reason for persuading to such a course, 
" that the Lord may continue his word which he spake con- 
cerning me, saying. If thy children take heed to their way, to 
walk before me in truth, with all their heart, and with all their 
soul, there shall not fail thee a man on the throne of Israel." 
1 Kings ii, 4. But when this fundamental condition was vio- 
lated, as it began to be in the time of Solomon himself, the 
prophetic word became in a manner responsive to the change ; 
so that now it spoke almost in the same language respecting 
the house of David, which had formerly been addressed to that 
of Saul, " I will rend the kingdom from thee, and give it to 
thy servant," (1 Kings xi, 11, compared with 1 Sam. xv, 28 ;) 
coupled only with the reservation, that so much was still to be 
left to the house of David as was needed for maintaining the 
essential provisions of the covenant. Even this, however, ap- 
peared for a time to give way ; the inveterate folly and wick- 
edness of the royal line called forth such visitations of judg- 
ment that the stately and glorious house of David, as it appears 
in the original prophecy, came afterward to look like a frail 
tabernacle, and even this, at a still future stage, as fallen pros- 
trate to the ground, according to the figure in Amos ix, 11. 
In consequence of these changes darkness settled down on the 
hearts of God's people, and fearful misgivings arose in their 
minds concerning the faithfulness of God to his covenant en- 
gagements. The painful question was stirred in their bosoms, 
" Has his promise failed for evermore ? " The thought even 
escaped from their lips, " He has made void the covenant of 
his servant." The whole psalm from which these words are 



MEN'S KESPONSIBILITIES. 79 

taken (the 89tli) is a striking record of tlie manner in which 
faith had to struggle with such doubts and perplexities, when 
the house of David was, for a time, cast down from its excel- 
lency, and God's plighted word, like the ark of his covenant, 
seemed to be given up into the hands of his enemies. 

God, however, vindicated in due time the truthfulness of his 
word, and the certainty of the result which it contemplated. 
The prophecy stood fast as regarded the grand article of its 
provisions ; only in traveling on to its accomplishment it had 
to pass through apparent defections and protracted delays, 
which could scarcely have been anticipated from the terms of 
its original announcement, and which were, in a sense, forced 
on it by human unbelief and waywardness. And so, within 
certain definite limits — those, namely, which connected the di- 
vine promise Avith the sphere of man's responsibility, and bore on 
the time and mode of its fulfillment — it might justly be said to 
carry a conditional element in its bosom, in respect to those 
whom it more immediately concerned ; while still, from first to 
last, the great purpose which it enshrined varied not, and con- 
tinued to be, as a determinate counsel of heaven, "without 
shadow of turning." 

2. Another class of prophecies, in their ostensible character 
and design widely difierent from the preceding, yet much akin 
as regards the point now under consideration, consists of those 
which, from time to time, were uttered concerning the powers 
and kingdoms that stood in a rival or antagonistic position to 
the kingdom of God. It is not such prophecies generally, as 
respected those powers and kingdoms, that are now referred to, 
but those which were given forth concerning them, addressed 
not so properly to them as to the people of God, and for the 
purpose of allaying what naturally awoke fear and anxiety in 
the minds of believers. Predictions like that of Jonah to the 
Ninevites belong to an entirely difierent class ; for in this there 
was a direct dealing with the people of a heathen city in re- 
spect to their sin and liability to punishment ; a preaching even 
more than a prediction ; and both preaching and prediction en- 
tering into the sphere of human responsibility, and intended to 
operate as means of moral suasion, Nineveh was not at the time 



80 THE EELATTON OF PEOPHECY TO 

viewed as occupying a hostile position to the interests of God's 
kingdom in Israel, but as itself a hopeful field for spiritual 
agency ; more hopeful indeed than Israel itself, and fitted to 
tell with a wholesome influence even on the people of the cov- 
enant. The mass of prophecies, however, uttered respecting 
worldly powers and states, had an entirely different object. 
Contemplating these as rival, and for the most part directly 
antagonistic forces, they were mainly intended to assure the 
hearts of God's people that whatever earthly resources and 
glory might for the time belong to those kingdoms, all was 
destined to pass away ; that their dominion, however arrogant 
and powerful, should come to an end ; while that kingdom 
which was more pecuharly the Lord's, and was identified with 
his covenant of grace and blessing, should survive all changes 
and attain, to an everlasting as well as universal supremacy. 
Prophecies of this description, therefore, stood in a very close 
relation to those already considered ; they but exhibited the 
reverse side of God's covenant love and faithfulness. If the 
purposes of grace and holiness connected with his covenant 
were to stand, all counter authority and rival dominion must 
be put down ; the safety and well-being of the one of necessity 
involved the destruction of the other. And to certify believers 
that such would be the result, was the more immediate design 
of the prophecies in question ; of the later prophecy, for exam- 
ple, uttered respecting I^ineveh by J^ahum, when the city had 
become the center of a God-opposing monarchy ; and of the 
many similar predictions scattered through the prophetic writ- 
ings concerning Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, Edom, and the sur- 
rounding heathen states. 

It holds of this class of prophecies as a whole, that in their 
grand aim they disclose the settled purposes of God : purposes 
that grow out of the essential principles of his character and 
government ; and that the results they announce are conse- 
quently to be regarded as of an absolute character. As con- 
cerned the kingdoms themselves whose destinies they unfolded, 
they could scarcely be said to become, through the prophecies 
in question, except in a very limited degree, the subjects of 
moral treatment ; for the prophecies were communicated to the 



MEN'S RESPONSIBILITIES. 81 

covenant people rather than to them, and comparatively few of 
the heathen concerned might ever come to any distinct knowl- 
edge of what had been spoken. Not, however, that they were 
thereby justified ; for the circumstances were such as plainly to 
demand inquiry ; and if this had been made, the truth would 
have been ascertained and known. The cases of Rahab and 
Ruth are examples of individuals who did come to the knowl- 
edge of what was written, and through the exercise of a believ- 
ing spirit escaped the doom of their race and country. There 
were ddubtless others of the same kind occurrins; from time to 
time, but of too rare and partial a kind to affect materially the 
general result. Indeed, with regard to the special aspect of the 
subject before us, they do not properly affect it at all ; for in so 
far as any from those godless and rival kingdoms listened to 
the voice of the prophets, they ceased to belong to an adverse 
interest ; they joined themselves to the cause of God's covenant, 
and as adversaries suffered (though in a happy form) the doom 
of extinction announced in the prophecies. It was simply in 
this character that such kingdoms were made the subjects of 
prophetic threatening, and from the essential relations of things 
it was indispensable that the doom threatened should be carried 
into execution ; if not (as it very rarely and partially was) by 
the conversion of the people to the knowledge and service of 
God, then by the defeating of their plans and the overthrow of 
their dominion as irreconcilably opposed to the interests of 
truth and righteousness. 

3. Leaving now the two classes of prophecies which from 
their very nature can possess little or nothing of a conditional 
element, we proceed to notice those which purposely and di- 
rectly bore upon men's responsibilities ; those which by means 
of promise or threatening placed the subjects of divine revela- 
tion under the peculiar training of heaven. Here we find from 
the sacred records that the conditional element has often, as a 
matter of fact, been strikingly exhibited ; and it must always, 
we conceive, be virtually if not formally and expressly found 
intermingling itself with prophetic intimations of the kind in 
question. This conditionality rests upon two great and funda- 
mental principles. The first of these is, that in God's prophet- 

6 



82 THE RELATION OF PROPHECY TO 

ical revelation of his dealing with men as in the revelations of 
his mind generally, all is based on an ethical foundation and 
directed to an ethical aim ; so that the prediction shonld never 
be viewed apart from the moral considerations on accomit of 
or in connection with which it was nttered. And the other 
principle is, that in giving intimations to men or communities 
of approaching good or e^dl, God speaks as in other parts of 
Scriptm'e in an anthropomorphic manner ; he addresses the 
subjects of his threatening or promise more from a human 
than from a divine point of view ; in other words, he adopts 
that mode of representation which is most natural to men, and 
which is best adapted for impressing and influencing their 
minds. 

Let us take as an illustration of the proper working of these 
principles the striking case of Xineveh, already referred to. 
After having sent his prophet to announce the destruction of 
!Xineveh in a specijS.ed time, the Lord suffered the prophecy to 
fall into abeyance, refrained fi*om executing the tlireatened 
doom, or in the language of Scripture, he repented of the evil 
he said he would do to the city, because of the moral change 
that had meanwhile taken place among its inhabitants, as mani- 
fested in their tm'ning from their evil ways, ^hy, we natu- 
rally ask, such a change in the mind of God ? ^Vliy such a dif- 
ference in his actual, from his previously meditated and an- 
nounced procedure ? Simply, we answer, on the ground of the 
first principle mentioned above, from the predomiuantly ethi- 
cal character of God's revelations and dealings ; on account of 
which these must be all framed so as to convey just impressions 
of sin and nghteousness, and preserve a proper correspondence 
between men's behavior toward God and his dealings toward 
them. The character of his administration in itself is such, 
that where sin is perseveringly and obstinately indulged in, it 
inevitably brings upon itself a doom of evil ; while on the other 
hand, if it is repented of and forsaken, the doom is averted and 
a heritage of blessing substituted in its place. But alternations 
of this sort, so far from bespeaking God to be capricious in his 
ways and changeable in the principles of his government, 
rather serve to manifest him in what alone is essential, as unal- 



MEN'S KESPONSIBILITIES. 83 

terably tlie same. Directing his procedure in accordance with 
the principles of righteousness, he must change his dealings 
toward men when their relation to him has become changed ; 
since otherwise there would be only an apparent uniformity, 
but a real diversity. So long ago Abraham perceived, when in 
his pleading for Sodom he said, " That be far from thee to slay 
the righteous with the wicked, and that the righteous should 
be as the wicked ; shall not the Judge of all the earth do right ? " 
And so also the prophet Ezekiel met the captious spirits of his 
day, who from looking more to the appearances than to the re- 
alities of things complained of ineq^ualities in the divine ad- 
ministration, " Hear now, O Israel, is not my way equal % Are 
not your ways unequal ? When a righteous man turneth away 
from his righteousness and committeth iniquities, and dieth in 
them ; for his iniquity that he hath done shall he die. Again, 
when the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness that 
he hath committed, and doeth that which is lawful and right, 
he shall save his soul alive." Ezek. xviii, 25-27. Hence, when 
Nineveh ceased from being a theater where wickedness of 
every form was running riot, and became a place where the 
name of God was feared, and his authority respected, the meas- 
ures of the divine government fitly partook of a corresponding 
change ; the people having passed into another condition, it 
was meet that they should be subjected to other treatment. 
And to have dealt with repenting as it had been threatened to 
do with corrupt and profligate IS^ineveh, would have been to 
disregard the essential distinctions between right and wrong in 
behavior, and to make it fare with the righteous even as with 
the wicked. 

It is with reference to these eternal principles of righteous- 
ness that the declarations in Scripture are made, which deny 
the possibility of change in the administration of God : such, 
for example, as has been already noted in the word of Balaam, 
" God is not a man that he should lie ; neither the Son of man 
that he should repent ; liath he said, and shall he not do it % 
hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good ? " Num. xxiii, 19. 
Or in the word of Samuel, which is but a resumption and fresh 
application of that of Balaam, *' The Strength of Israel will not 



84 THE RELATION OF PROPHECY TO 

lie nor repent ; for he is not a man that he should repent." 
1 SaKi. XV, 29. Testimonies of this sort uniformly bear respect 
to such revealed purposes of God as are inseparably connected 
with his inherent and immutable righteousness, and conse- 
quently admit of no change in the direction of his dealings. 
To purposes of that description belonged, as we have already 
stated, his fixed determination to connect with the seed of Is- 
rael his peculiar blessing. The covenant of God was with 
them, and in the time of Balaam they stood as a people within 
the bonds of the covenant. And standing there, the faithful- 
ness of God was pledged to secure them against the assaults of 
any adversary, or the enchantments of any diviner. But when 
they fell from the obligations of the covenant, as thousands of 
them did, shortly after the word of Balaam was uttered, and in 
later times the great mass of the people ; then God made them 
to know what he himself called his breach of promise, (!Num. 
xiv, 34 ; Zech. xi, 10 ;) he changed the blessing into a curse. 
In such a case as in the reverse one of I^ineveh, the change ol 
dealing on the part of God was necessitated by a change of re- 
lation on men's part to him ; and he could only maintain uni- 
formity of action in the essential principles of his moral govern- 
ment by giving a new turn to the course of his external admin- 
istration. 

But such being the case, why, it may be asked, should not 
the prophetic word be always framed so as to meet a possible 
change of this description ? If it is to be understood condition- 
ally, why should it not also speak conditionally ? Why, to re- 
fer again to the case of Mneveh, instead of declaring absolutely 
that the city should be overthrown in forty days, should it not 
rather have taken the form of announcing such a doom in case 
.the people did not repent ? We reply on the ground of the 
second principle previously mentioned, that in this as in his 
revelations generally, God spake as from the human point of 
view ; he took up the case of the city as it stood at the time, 
and pronounced without qualification oi reserve its appropriate 
doom ; knowing, perhaps, that the very absoluteness and pre- 
cision of the form was the best adapted, it may be the only one 
actually fitted, to arouse slumbering consciences, and lead to 



MEN'S KESPONSIBILITIES. 85 

serious repentance. 'No doubt, if tlie thing done had involved 
any breach of righteous principle ; if the throwing of Jonah's 
message into such a form had been a mere stroke of policy, in- 
consistent with the truth of things, in that case, however 
adapted to the higher end in view, it could not have been em- 
ployed with the sanction and approval of God. But who 
would venture on such an affirmation ? who has any right to 
say that the predicted overthrow of wicked Nineveh would 
not have actually taken place if E^ineveh had persevered in its 
wickedness ? There may have been, and doubtless were, instru- 
ments of destruction at hand ready to do the work of judgment, 
if the divine purpose had required it to be done. What we 
have here to do with is simply the prophet's message, which 
must be held to have been a genuine and trathful utterance of 
God's mind and purpose toward Nineveh in the circumstances 
of its existing position ; as the place where sin had reached its 
last stages of enormity, and cried in heaven's ear for immediate 
vengeance. But when that position was shifted, when sin was 
repented of and abandoned, then another state of things, and 
one not contemplated in the message, came into being ; the 
eaidse of the threatened evil had gone, and there was room now 
for the principle entering, " The curse causeless shall not 



come." 



Indeed the form, as to its main features, has a substantial 
parallel in the first great act in the drama of God's administra- 
tion toward fallen man. The constitution of grace introduced 
at the fall proceeded on the assumption that not only was the 
human race to perpetuate its existence, but that in its history 
the good, upon the whole, was to prevail. What was then said 
and done contained a matter-of-fact promise or prediction 
that God should still have his delights with the children of 
men. Yet when the era of the deluge approaches, we meet 
with the very strong declaration — the strongest in the whole 
Bible, as to a change of feeling or purpose in the mind of God — 
" It repented the Lord that he had made man upon the earth, 
and it grieved him at his heart." Gen. vi, 6. In this declara- 
tion, to use the words of Calvin, God is represented as " cloth- 
ing himself with our affections that he might the more effect- 



86 THE RELATION OF PEOPHECT TO 

ually penetrate our hearts, and impress us witli Lis abhorrence 
of sin. It is as if he had said, " This is not my workmanship ; 
this not the being I formed after my own image, and replen- 
ished with snch noble endowments ; I disdain to acknowledge 
such a corrupt and degenerate creature as my offspring." Or, 
as Hengstenberg puts it, with a more especial respect to God's 
end in creating man, " The words have respect merely to the 
destination of man, to glorify God with a free and willing mind. 
"Were this man's only, as it certainly is his original destination, 
God must have repented that he had made the degenerate race 
of mankind. What God would have done Iiad this point alone 
come into consideration, he is here represented as having actu- 
ally done, in order to impress upon the hearts of men how 
great their corruption was, and how deep was God's abhorrence 
of their sin." * Whatever precise turn we may give to our ex- 
planation of the passage, there can be no doubt, that as a rep- 
resentation of the mind of God toward mankind at the close of 
the antediluvian period, it exhibits a very marked change as 
compared with what appeared at the beginning, and a change 
which finds its justification in the two principles we have enun- 
ciated : first, that in God's revelations of himself, whether j?7'o- 
spective or /'^Prospective, the ethical design and tendency ever 
has the foremost place ; and secondly, that for the purpose 
more especially of effecting his aim in this, he discloses his 
character and purposes in a human manner, as the only way by 
which he can be properly understood, or can effectually reach 
our hearts. 

So much is this the case, and so certainly does the truth 
involved in it underlie the whole prophetic testimony, in so far 
at least as this touches on the dangers or the expectations of 
men, that the prophet Jeremiah has formally announced it as 
a definite principle of prophetical interpretation : "At what 
instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a 
kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and to destroy; if 
that nation, against whom I have pronounced, turn from their 
evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them. 
And at what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and 

* Authentie, ii, p. 453. 



MEN'S KESPONSIBILITIES. 87 

concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant ; if it do evil in 
m J sight, that it obey not my voice, then I will repent of the 
good wherewith I said I would benefit them." Jer. xviii, Y-10. 
It may be the case that, for the most part in the prospective 
delineations of good and evil which are given in prophecy, 
there was to be no such moral change in the subjects of them 
as would call for the application of this principle in the inter- 
pretation of their import. More especially might this be ex- 
pected to be generally the case in respect to the denunciations 
of coming judgment, which, being usually pronounced against 
inveterate adversaries of the truth, were but too unhkely, in 
most cases, to tell with any wholesome and reformatory influ- 
ence on those whom they respected. Yet still even these the 
prophet Jeremiah teaches us to regard as, in their more direct 
and primary aim, intimations of Grod's displeasure on account 
of sin, and only in a certain event predictions of what should 
actually occur in providence. They did not in any case be- 
come of necessity events in history. Their doing so was a con- 
tingency depending on the spiritual state and behavior of those 
over whom the threatenings of judgment were suspended. And 
to take such prophetic burdens in the fixed and absolute sense 
of announcements of evil, that must be executed as described, 
is plainly to overlook an essential element in the structure of 
prophecy, and possibly also to involve ourselves m inextricable 
difficulties as to its proper fulfillment. 

How it would have happened, with such a mode of inter- 
pretation in the case of Jonah's prophetic judgment against 
Kineveh, is obvious at first sight. But let us take another 
example, and one which has respect not to open and inveterate 
adversaries, but to parties standing within the bonds of the 
covenant, in whose case there was less to interfere with the 
moral action of the prophecy as a revelation of the mind and 
character of God. We shall take the prophetic utterance in 
the last words of Jacob on Levi and Simeon : " Cursed be 
their anger, for it was fierce ; and their wrath, for it was cruel ; 
I will divide them in Jacob, and scatter them in Israel." Gen. 
xlix, 7. As the language itself bears, this w^as of the nature of 
a curse. Only indeed comjparatlvely so, for being themselves 



88 THE EELATION OF PROPHECY TO 

cMldreii of tlie covenant, and viewed as heads of a covenant- 
offspring, they still had a share in the blessing connected with 
the covenant, and are hence said to have been blessed by the 
patriarch along with their brethren, (ver. 28.) But the sen- 
tence of judgment pronounced upon them, which took a form 
so strikingly retributive — destining them, in consequence of 
their former union in iniquity, to future separation and scatter- 
ing in the land of their inheritance — this prophetic sentence 
of judgment evidently proceeded on the footing of a moral 
connection, which runs through the whole of Jacob's prophecy 
respecting the heads of the future Israel ; a connection first of 
all between righteousness and blessing, sin and punishment ; 
and, still further, between the condition of the parents and the 
offspring as subjects respectively of the one or of the other. 
In the different sections of the covenant-people there was to be 
a descending impulse in evil or good, to be transmitted from 
those patriarchal heads to their future descendants ; and this 
was dwelt upon with such peculiar emphasis at that formative 
period of their history, for the purpose of stamping indelibly 
upon the minds of the people how deeply moral considerations 
entered into the constitution under which all their prospects 
were held. So far as Simeon was concerned, the prophetic 
threatening of the dying parent appears to have produced no 
beneficial effect of a moral kind, and the germ of coming evil 
it contained took its natural course of development. Of all the 
tribes, that of Simeon suffered most severely from the divine 
judgments on the way to Canaan, implying, of course, that 
among its members there had been a sad pre-eminence in 
transgression ; and in so enfeebled a condition did it enter the 
sacred territory, that, instead of having a separate province of 
its own, a portion was allotted to it within the inheritance of 
the tribe of Judah. (Joshua xix, 1.) It was so shattered and 
dispersed that it never properly attained to a distinct tribal 
standing, but became merged, as it would seem, in Judah ; and 
its people are doubtless those more particularly referred to in 
1 Kings xii, 17, as " the children of Israel that dwelt in the 
cities of Judah," who adhered to Kehoboam. Matters, how- 
ever, turned out differently with Levi. From whatever cause 



MEN'S RESPONSIBILITIES. 89 

it miglit be, probably from nothing more tlian a consideration 
of the solemn words of the dying patriarch, this tribe became 
distinguished for its piety and zeal in the canse of God ; and 
on this account it had the singular distinction conferred on it, 
first of furnishing the great Deliverer and Lawgiver of the 
nation, and then of having its sons consecrated in all coming 
time for ministering in the more peculiar offices of religion. 
In their case, therefore, while the dispersion in Israel, threat- 
ened in the prophetic judgment, might be said to be carried 
into effect, since the priests and Levites were in reality dis- 
persed among the other tribes for the better discharge of their 
spiritual functions, yet, in accordance with their altered con- 
dition, the act came to assume a new character. What was 
originally announced as a brand of dishonor on the tribe of Levi 
was at length turned into a mark of distinction ; and if it served 
to render the numbers of the tribe politically weak, it provided 
for them at the same time the opportunity of becoming morally 
strong, assigned them in fact the place of highest influence, so 
long as they were faithful to their high charge as the spiritual 
teachers and guides of Israel. The dispersion, indeed, was 
such that it could only become a source of weakness, if the 
great ends for which it was more immediately appointed were 
allowed to fall into abeyance. But the change thus put on the 
original prophecy, the new form and aspect given to the divine 
procedure toward the tribe of Levi, in consequence of the 
marked change in a moral respect which its members after- 
ward underwent, is a striking exemplification of the principle 
of Jeremiah, as to the dependence in prophecies of this nature 
for the actual result on the spiritual state and conduct of the 
parties concerned. 

If, however, in such cases of threatened judgment, we find 
the principle coming into force, not less certainly may we ex- 
pect to see it acted on in the opposite class of cases, in those, 
namely, in which the theme of prophecy was of a blissful tend- 
ency. If a change in man's spiritual relation to God from bad 
to good necessitates a corresponding change in the manifesta- 
tions he gives of himself to them, an alteration in the reverse 
order from good to bad must, in like manner, draw after it a 



90 THE EELATIO:?^ OF PEOPHECY TO 

partial or total suspension of Grod's intention to do them good. 
So that if the threatened judgments of the prophetic word, then 
also its promised blessings are to be regarded, not as absolute 
and indispensable announcements of coming events, but rather 
as exhibitions of the Lord's goodness, prospective indications 
of his desire and purpose to bless the persons or communities 
addressed, yet capable of being checked or altogether canceled 
in the event of a perverse and rebellious disposition being 
manifested by them. The word of Jeremiah makes express 
mention of this class of cases as well as the other. And the 
apostle Paul reannounces the principle with special emphasis 
on this particular branch of its application, when he says, at 
the close of his reasoning on the case of the Jewish people, " Be- 
hold, therefore, the goodness and the severity of God : on them 
which fell severity, but toward thee goodness, if thou continue 
in his goodness / otherwise thou shalt also he cut ^," (Rom. 
xi, 22 ;) that is, the prophetic intimations of future blessing are 
to be understood as valid only so long as the spiritual relation 
contemplated in them abides. "When that ceases a new and 
different state of things has entered which the promise did not 
contemplate, and to which it cannot in justice be applied. 

There is no want of cases of this description. They are even 
more numerous than those of the former class, and are to be 
found both in the larger and in the more limited sphere of 
things. Thus, in respect to a single family, a very emphatic 
seal was set on the principle by the dealings adopted with the 
house of Eli, when, for its profligacy, the right to minister in 
the priest's office was taken from it. " Wherefore the Lord God 
of Israel saith, I said, indeed, that thy house, and the house of 
thy father, should walk before me forever. But now the Lord 
saith. Be it far from me ; for them that honor me I will honor, 
and they that despise me shall be lightly esteemed." 1 Sam. 
ii, 30.* God never meant that the promise of blessing should 

* The reference to the first part of this announcement to some previous word 
of God, giving assurance of a perpetual right to the blessing and honor of the 
priesthood, must be to such passages as Exod. xxviii, 43, xxix, 9, where the priest- 
hood was given in perpetuity to the sons of Aaron. Had the house of Eli belonged 
to the posterity of Phinehas, we would naturally have thought of Num. xxv, 11-13. 
But it was of the line of Ithamar. (1 Chron. vi, 4-9 ; xxiv, 1-6 ; 1 Sam. xiv, 3.) 



MEN'S EESPONSIBILITIES. 91 

hold good in all circumstances. Like the revelations generally 
of his mind and will, it was linked inseparably to his own 
moral nature ; and as the degenerate offspring had abandoned 
the spiritual position of their forefather, the ground no longer 
existed on which the promised heritage of blessing proceeded. 
We have even if possible a still more specific case in the 'New 
Testament Scripture, in the prophecy of future honor and 
blessing uttered by our Lord to the apostles. When speaking 
to the twelve he said, " Yerily I say unto you, that ye which 
have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of man 
shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye shall also sit upon 
twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel." Matt. 
xix, 28. Yet one of these twelve was Judas, of whom the 
Lord cert^ainly knew that qe should have no part in the matter, 
and that another should take his place. On a larger scale, the 
history of Israel is replete with changes and vicissitudes of a 
similar kind. Thus when Moses was sent to them in Egypt, 
he came with a message from the Lord that their groanings had 
been heard, and that now the promise given to their fathers, 
respecting the possession of the land of Canaan, was to be car- 
ried into effect. The message proceeded on the supposition, as 
was afterward expressly declared, (Exod. xix, 6, etc.,) that they 
would hearken to the voice and obey the call of God. But 
failing, as a great majority of them did, to verify this supposi- 
tion, the promised good was in their case never realized. So, 
again, the prophecies which were uttered before they entered 
Canaan, respecting the portion of good things awaiting them 
there ; that it should be to them " a land flowing with milk 
and honey ;" that they should dwell in it alone among the 
nations, replenished with the favor of Heaven, and enjoying it 
as an everlasting possession ; such prophecies as these, which 
were, in other words, promises of rich grace and beneficence, 
could not be more than partially verified, because the children 
of the covenant were ever falling from the state of filial rever- 

The threatening here, it must be remembered, has respect not simply to the loss 
of the more peculiar honors of the high priesthood, but to such afflictive dispen- 
sations as should bring marked dishonor upon the family, and render their share 
even in the common privileges of the priestly office precarious and insecure.— 
Comp. 1 Sara, iv, xxii; 1 Chron. xxiv. 



92 MENS RESPOXSIBILITIES. 

ence and love, whicli was presupposed as the ground of all 
inheritance of blessing. 

]^or is this dependence of such portions of prophecy on the 
condition of those who are the subjects of them, a mere expe- 
dient devised to meet a difficulty in interpretation. On the 
contrary it rests on a principle which is essentially connected 
with the nature of God, and therefore cannot but pervade the 
revelations he gives of his mind and will in Scripture. There ^ 
from first to last, all is predominantly of a moral or spiritual, 
as contradistinguished from a simply natm'al character; and in 
nothing more does the religion of the Bible, in its entire com- 
pass, differ from the religions of the world than in the place it 
assigns to the principles of righteousness. These it constantly 
sets in the foremost rank, and subordinates to them all divine 
arrangements and responsible agencies. It knows nothing of 
results in good or evil, coming as merely natural processes of 
development, but ever brings into account the eternal distinc- 
tions between sin and holiness, wliich have their root in the 
character of God. It was the capital error of the covenant- 
people that they so often forgot this. Holding their position 
and their prospects formally in connection with their descent 
from Abraham, this simply natural element was ever apt to 
assume too high a place in their minds, and to invest in their 
eyes the promises of God with an absolute and unconditional 
character. For them it was a most pernicious and fatal mis- 
take in experience, as it must also be for us in interpretation, 
if we should tread in their footsteps. We want the key to a 
right understanding of all prophetic utterances of good and 
evil, unless we keep in view their relation to the principles of 
God's moral government. And we shall certainly misunder- 
stand both him and them if we suppose that, when he most 
loudly threatens visitations of evil, he shall execute the threat- 
ening 'where repentance meanwhile has taken place, or that he 
can continue to bless those who may have hardened their hearts 
in sin, however expressly and copiously he may have promised 
to do them good.* 

* See Appendix D. 



THE PEOPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION. 93 



CHAPTER V. 

. THE PROPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION. 

We proceed now to the consideration of a topic which bears 
even more closely and directly npon the interpretation of the 
prophetic Scriptures than those hitherto discussed. We- mean 
the appropriate style and diction of prophecy. The subject 
calls for the more particular and careful treatment, as it has 
been associated with many fanciful notions, and is now more 
than ever mixed up with modes of interpretation altogether 
groundless and indefensible. We shall, therefore, need to go at 
much greater length into this department of our inquiry than 
has been necessary in regard to any of the points which have 
already passed under our notice. And for the sake of greater 
distinctness, we shall view the subject in a negative light, be- 
fore we look at it positively ; in other words, we shall first en- 
deavor to show, and that in opposition to prevailing errors, 
what is not the proper style and diction of prophecy, and then 
establish some of its more fundamental and essential character- 
istics, with the deductions that naturally grow out of them. 



SECTION I. 

NEGATIVELY I WHAT IS NOT THE CHARACTER OF THE PROPHETIC 

STYLE AND DICTION. 

By looking at the matter in this negative aspect, we have re- 
spect more particularly to one of the results growing out of the 
too exclusive contemplation of prophecy on its merely natural 
side, and in its apologetic use as an argument for the defense of 
the Bible. Writing, as the exponent of an age and a class by 
whom this was very commonly done. Bishop Butler gave ex- 
pression to the sentiment, which has since been many a time 



94 THE PROPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION. 

repeated, " Prophecy is nothing but the history of events be- 
fore they come to pass." * Of course if it be nothing but that, 
it should be written like that : as the charade?' of both is the 
same, there can be no reason why the style of both should not 
also be substantially the same. Proceeding, therefore, on this 
ground, and carrying out the principle to its legitimate conclu- 
sions, two schools of prophetic interpretation have sprung up, 
having one starting-point in common, but wide as the poles 
asunder as to the goal, to which they deem the light of prophecy 
fitted to conduct us. The more Cliristian section reason thus ; 
Sinca prophecy is but history anticipated, all it reveals of the 
future must be taken as literally as history itself ; every word 
must have its simple meaning attached to it, that and no more ; 
so that the degree of fulfillment which has been given to any 
prophecy of Scripture is to be ascertained and measured by the 
adaptation of what is written to events subsequently occurring, 
viewed simply in the light of a pre-historical intimation of them ; 
whatever has not been so fulfilled must be regarded as still 
waiting for its accomplishment in the future. And as this view 
seemed to betoken a high regard for the exact and perfect truth- 
fulness of the prophetic record, so by pressing the literality of 
some of its announcements, it appeared for a time to gain in 
value, and to furnish new weapons for the vindication of the 
faith. Hence the popularity of such works on prophecy as have 
been written to show what numerous and exact correspondences 
can be pointed out in the past or present state of the world, 
with the prophetic delineations of Scripture, and how often the 
language of prophecy has proved like that of history, by receiv- 
ing the most close and palpable verifications. 

We are far from wishing to undervalue works of this descrip- 
tion, or denying that they have rendered any service to the 
cause of divine truth. They have unquestionably contributed 
to awaken a more lively interest in this portion of the word of 
God, and have also helped to difi'use a more general and intel- 
ligent belief in its verity, by fixing attention on certain unde- 
niable fulfillments of its predictions. But it is perfectly possi- 
ble that the efforts in this direction may have somewhat over- 

"*= " Analogy," Part ii, chap. 7. 



THE PROPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION. 95 

sliot their proper mark ; that the advantage obtained on one 
side may have been pushed so far as to create a disadvantage 
on another ; that the evidence of a close and literal fulfillment 
of particular prophecies, by being carried beyond its due limits, 
may have given rise to vievrs and expectations respecting the 
structure and design of prophecy in general, which are neither 
warrantable in themselves nor capable of being vindicated by 
a reference to historical results. Such indeed has proved to be 
the case. This principle of regarding prophecy as merely an- 
ticipative history, will not stand by any fair construction, with 
some of the recorded examples of fulfilled prophecy mentioned 
in ]^ew Testament Scripture. It would oblige us to consider 
these as little better than fanciful or arbitrary accommodations. 
And even in the midst of those which to a certain extent admit 
of being read in the exact and literal style of history, there 
often occur passages which have obviously received no fulfill- 
ment of a similar description. The consequence has been that 
the number of fulfilled prophecies has been constantly lessen- 
ing in the hands of this school of interpreters. Not a few that 
at one period were held to have received their accomplishment 
have latterly, by the more stringent and uniform application of 
the principle of historic literality, been thrown into the class 
which are to stand over for their fulfillment till the time of the 
end. And of those which seem to have found their verification 
in the facts of Gospel history, a considerable portion are al- 
lowed to have had only a kind of preliminary fulfillment : such 
a fulfillment as is at most but a prelude and earnest of the 
proper one. 

It is no new thing for extremes to meet ; and so far there is 
a coincidence between this school of interpreters, and another 
of a very different spirit, that they both agree in reducing very 
much the number of fulfilled prophecies. This latter class, 
however, hold that there are few if any to be fulfilled, scarcely 
indeed any that can be fitly characterized as history written 
beforehand ; while the others do not question their existence, 
but only in the case of the greater part transfer the period of 
their fulfillment to the yet undeveloped future. On the hypo- 
thetical ground that in so far as prophecy may be descriptive 



96 THE PROPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION. 

of coming events in Providence it must be written like history, 
the school we now refer to think, some that they can find very 
little, others almost nothing so written among the prophecies 
of Scripture ; and so, practically they come in great measure to 
change the idea of prophecy ; to deny that its object was to 
give any precise or definite outline of the future, and to regard 
it rather as the varied expression of men's fears or longings as 
to the coming destinies of the world. Thus, Schleiermacher, 
who may be said, if not to have originated, at least to have 
rendered current, this mode of thinking regarding prophecy, 
was of opinion that in Old Testament Scripture there are no 
actual predictions of the Messiah ; nothing more than indistinct 
longings, expressions on the part of pious men of their felt need 
of redemption ; such also, only more intent and earnest, as 
some, even among the heathen, were conscious of. It might 
possibly be too much to say that Dr. Arnold, in this country, 
went quite so far as this in disavowing the predictive character 
of scriptural prophecy ; yet there are some passages in his writ- 
ings which seem to come very near to it. ^' If you put," he 
writes, in a letter to Dr. Hawkins, written about two years be- 
fore his death, " If you put, as you may do, Christ for abstract 
good and Satan for abstract evil, I do not think that the notion 
is so startling, that they are the main and only proper subjects 
of prophecy, and that in all other cases the language is, in some 
part or other, hyperbolical ; hyperbolical, I mean, and not 
merely figurative. ITor can I conceive how, on any other sup- 
position, the repeated applications of the Old Testament lan- 
guage to our Lord, not only by others, but by himself, can be 
understood to be other than arbitrary." This evacuating on 
Arnold's part of nearly all that was properly predictive in pro- 
phecy, and in respect to what one might look for distinct and 
circumstantial fulfillments in Providence, was in one sense 
a revulsion from the common practice of assimilating prophecy 
to history. He held them to be essentially difierent in their 
characteristic features and objects, but did so in a way which 
at the same time left little for it to do in foretelling things to 
come ; in short, lessened the predictive element in it in pro- 
portion as he magnified its dissimilarity to the historical. In 



THE PROPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION. 97 

reality therefore, there are here also the same fundamental ideas, 
only differently assorted and made to contribute to a different 
result. It is supposed that prophecy, to be in the ordinary 
sense predictive in character, must be historical in style ; and 
that it possesses little of the one because it partakes little of 
the other. 

There are not wanting persons, however, bearing the Chris- 
tian name, but possessing little of the Christian spirit, who 
would rob prophecy altogether of its predictive character, on 
the ground of its containing no historical delineations of the 
future which lie beyond the reach of human foresight. A 
representative of this school tells us, " The writings of the 
prophets contain nothing above the reach of the human facul- 
ties. Here are noble and spirit-stirring appeals to men's con- 
science, patriotism, honor, and religion; beautiful poetic de- 
scriptions, odes, hymns, expressions of faith almost beyond 
praise. But the mark of human infirmity is on them all, and 
proofs or signs of miraculous inspiration are not found in them." 
That they commonly prefaced their declarations by, " Thus 
saith the Lord," merely arose, we are informed, from the prev- 
alent Jewish feeling which regarded every manifestation of 
religious and moral power as the direct gift of God. But it is 
denied that any of them ever uttered " a distinct, definite, and 
unambiguous prediction of any future event that has since 
taken place, which a man, without a miracle, could not equally 
well predict." And in regard particularly to Messianic proph- 
ecy, we have the bold assertion, '^ It has never been shown that 
there is, in the whole of the Old Testament, one single instance 
V that, in the plain and natural sense of the words, foretells the 
birth, life, or death of Jesus of N^azareth." * This might seem 
to be going far enough in the depreciation of the prophetic 
Scriptures in their predictive character, but there is a phase 
beyond it still. For Mr. Foxton, in what he calls his " Popular 
Christianity," not only maintains that there are no proper pre- 
dictions of things to come in Scripture, but that there cannot 
be. He holds the doctrine of prophecy to be " directly at 
variance with the theory of Providence," the theory, namely, 

* "Absolute Religion," by Theodore Parker, pp. 205-9. 

7 



98 THE PKOPHETIC STYLE A^^D DICTION. 

of a providence proceeding entirely according to general laws, 
as opposed to any particular interpositions of divine power. 
The farthest he can go is to admit that men of superior intel- 
lect and sagacity, who have acquired more than ordinary insight 
into the laws of nature and God's dealings in providence, may 
sometimes have uttered what, in common language, might be 
called predictions. Thus " the prophecy of Christ concerning 
the destruction of Jerusalem, recorded by St. Matthew, may 
be interpreted as a simple instance of political foresight into an 
event extremely probable in the existing condition of his coun- 
try. And the same may be said generally of the predictions 
of the earlier Jewish prophets respecting the probable fortunes 
of their nation. The prophecies of the advent of Christ, when 
stripped of the ingenious explanations, forced constructions, and 
subtle spirit of adaptation displayed by critics and commenta- 
tors, are nothing more than instances of a speculative expecta- 
tion of those reformations of society which the periodical 
appearance of men of genius, after long periods of corruption, 
always renders probable in the history of nations." * 

Such are the extremes to which, in different hands, the tend- 
ency has run to place prophecy, in so far as it may be predict- « 
ive, on a level with history as to style and diction. On the 
one hand, some, finding little or nothing, as they conceive, of 
such prophecy in the Bible, reduce to the merest fraction, or 
altogether disallow predictions in the proper sense; while 
others maintain that they abound, indeed, in sufficient number, 
but that comparatively few have as yet been properly fulfilled. 
It becomes us, therefore, to look well to the foundation out of 
which such tendencies and results have grown ; and we shall 
do so with more especial reference to those who appear to take 
up in good faith the historical view of prophecy, and regard it 
as necessary to the strict veracity of God's word. 

The great argument of the persons who advocate this view 
is the exact fulfillment of many prophecies already accom- 

^ "Popular Christianity," p. 120. We take no notice of some of the more 
offensive things in this volume; as when the prophets of the Old Testament are 
spoken of as having visions precisely akin to those of Swedenborg of Sweden, Jacob 
Behmen of Germany, and James NayLer of England. 



THE PROPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION. 99 

plislied, and especially of tliose which pointed to the appear- 
ance and history of Christ on earth. ^N^ever, it is alleged, were 
facts more literally described than those which were foretold to 
take place, and actually have taken place, in connection with 
.the events of Gospel history. But if the principle of literal 
exactness or historical precision holds there, why should it not 
be understood as holding also in other parts of prophetical 
Scripture ? What can a departure from it be but a corruption 
of the simplicity of the divine word ? And so, since throughout 
we have to do with plain historical description on the one side, 
and corresponding matters of fact upon the other, ''the vision 
which Isaiah," for example, " saw concerning Judah and Jerusa- 
lem," the heading of his whole book, must be viewed as bear- 
ing an immediate respect only to the Jewish people, and their 
land and city. So also in regard to what is written generally 
in the prophetic word, Edom is to be taken literally of Edom, 
Moab of Moab, Egypt of Egypt, Zion of Zion, and Jerusalem 
of Jerusalem. 

N^ow, if the ground on which this stringent literality is con- 
tended for were real ; if the sense, which past fulfillments of 
prophecy appear to have put on the predictions of Scripture, 
were uniformly that alone of the historical and literal ; then 
we should not hesitate to regard it as a settled point that the 
past should in this respect rule the future, and that for proph- 
ecy in general, what remains to be fulfilled, as well as what 
has already been accomplished, all must be understood and 
interpreted like history. But is it so in reality ? Let us put 
the principle to the test ; let us try it even with the first proph- 
ecy uttered in the ears of fallen man. Addressing the serpent, 
the Lord said, " And I will put enmity between thee and the 
woman, and between thy seed and her seed ; it shall bruise 
thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." Here, the seed of 
the woman beyond all doubt is the woman's offspring — a child 
of promise, or collectively, as the word seed is commonly taken, 
a line of children to be born of her ; and, consequently, the 
serpent — if all must be taken in the prosaic style, and read as 
liistory — can only be that creature of the field then present, and 
its seed the off'spring which might afterward by natural gener- 



100 THE PROPHETIC STYLE AKD DICTION. 

ation proceed from it. The prophecy, therefore, speaks merely 
of the injuries to be received from serpents on the one side, 
and of the killing of serpents on the other ; and any member 
of Eve's future family who might have the fortune to kill a 
serpent should, by so doing, verify the prophecy. For, taking 
all in a simply historical aspect, as the woman's seed must be 
one or more of human kind, so the serpent and his seed can 
only comprehend what is of the serpent kind. Such is a fair 
application of the principle of a bald and naked Hteralism ; and 
the fruitful result it enables us to extract from the primeval 
promise to a fallen world, is an assurance of man's relative 
superiority to the most subtle of beasts, and the ultimate 
destruction of the serpent brood. Could the lowest rationalism 
find anything more suited to its purpose ? Or could the pitiable 
condition of the parents of the human family, and the great 
necessities of their fallen state, have been more bitterly mocked? 
It would truly have been giving them a serpent for bread.* 

Those who can rest in such a conclusion and see nothing in 
it at variance with the character of God and the general tenor 
of his revelations to men, are not likely to be won by any rea- 
soning of ours to a better style of interpretation. But on the 
palpable inadequacy of the result so obtained we affirm that 
the simply literal for prophecy will not do at the very outset ; 
and that to apply it to the first prophetic announcement con- 
nected with the hopes of mankind, were only to burlesque the 
occasion of its deliverance. Let it be that some respect was 
therein had to the natural enmity which was henceforth to 
subsist between the serpent-brood and the human family ; still 
when the whole circumstances of the case are taken into 
account, this cannot now, nor could it ever, be regarded as 

. * This is all that even Hoffmann finds in the original promise, the spirit of liter- 
alism in him leading to the same result as the spirit of rationalism in others. He 
asks if there was no matter of joy in these words of God for man? and answers 
'• Xothing, but that it was not quite over with thera. They were to live for a time, 
and perpetuate their nature in offspring like themselves." (Weissagung and -Erful- 
lung, i, p. 76.) The simple prolongation of existence as opposed to utter destruc- 
tion, was all they had given them to hope for. Such literalism finds a fitting 
parallel in the rationalist Credners view of Joel ii, 28, who thinks that the aM flesh, 
on which the Spirit is to be poured out, must mean absolutely all, beasts as well 
as men. yea, even locusts. 



THE PEOPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION. 101 

more than a sign or emblem of the spiritual truth which lay 
underneath, and which alone constitutes its prophetic import 
for Adam and his offspring. The " warfare," as has been 
justly remarked,* " which the human race have carried on and 
successfully with the serpent-brood, has been merely a repeti- 
tion by emblems of the predicted warfare which the spiritual 
seed have been carrying on against the spiritual old serpent, 
who is the devil ; which prediction received its highest accom- 
plishment when Christ at his crucifixion and resurrection tri- 
umphed over Satan ; when the conqueror bruised Satan's head 
after the tempter had bruised the victor's heel." How, indeed, 
could a thoughtful mind rest satisfied with any other than a 
spiritual interpretation of the prophecy ? It was not a phys- 
ical but a spiritual conquest which the tempter had achieved, 
and which, according to the principles of the divine govern- 
ment, drew after it the heritage of natural evil that settled 
down upon the world. Could it be seriously imagined that 
the successful warfare which was now with divine help to be 
waged, and the final victory that was to be won by the 
woman's seed, should be of an inferior kind to that accom- 
plished by the serpent? The good promised should in that 
case have been no proper reversion of the evil. Even the lan- 
guage, by its poetical coloring, naturally carries the mind to 
this higher aspect of things, and lodges a silent protest against 
the notion of a flat and prosaic literalism. To bruise a ser- 
pent's head is a natural expression for putting it to death, 
making a final end of its power to injure or destroy ; but who 
ever heard of a serpent, in the natural sense, bruismg a per- 
son's heel ? To speak thus is not to speak in the style of his- 
tory, as if the object were to give a naked unvarnished account 
of a specific result hereafter to be expected ; not this, but 
rather a picturing out, by means of existing relations and with 
a measure of poetic freedom, of the general nature of what was 
in prospect as to the relative positions of the contending par- 
ties, and the final issue of the struggle. 

nightly viewed, therefore, this first prophecy is an instruct- 
ive example not in favor of, but against the idea of prophecy 
* "The Structure of Prophecy," by James Douglas, Esq., of Cavers, p. 28. 



102 THE PE.OPHETIC STYXE AND DICTION". 

being merely history written beforehand. It is a sign and wit- 
ness set up at the very threshold of the prophetic territory^ 
showing how much prophecy, in the general form of its 
announcements, might be expected to take its hue and aspect 
from the occasion and circumstances that gave rise to it ; liow 
it would serve itself of things seen and present as a symbolical 
cover, under which to exhibit a perspective of things which 
were to be hereafter ; and how, even when there might be a 
certain fulfillment of what was written according to the letter, 
the terms of the prediction might yet be such as to make it 
evident that something of a higher kind was required properly 
to verify its meaning. Such plainly was the case with respect 
to the prediction at the fall ; and in proof that it must be so 
read and understood, some of the later intimations of prophecy, 
which are founded upon the address to the serpent, vary the 
precise form of the representation which they give of the ulti- 
mate termination of the conflict. Thus Isaiah, when descant- 
ing on the peace and blessedness of Messiah's kingdom, tells 
us not of the serpent's head being bruised, but of his power to 
hurt being destroyed ; of dust being his meat, and of the child 
playing upon his hole, chap, xi, 8, 9 ; Ixv, 25. It is the same 
truth again, that appears at the close of the Apocalypse, under 
the still different form of chaining the old serpent and casting 
him into the bottomless pit, that he might not deceive the 
nations any more, (He v. xx, 2, 3 ;) his power to deceive in the 
one case corresponding to his liberty to bruise the heel in the 
other, and his being chained and imprisoned in the bottomless 
pit to the threatened bruising of his head. 

The introduction of t}^e into the scheme of God's revela- 
tions brought another peculiarity into the region of prophecy, 
and still further increased its tendency to diverge from the sim- 
ple and direct style of historical narration. Every type was so 
far a prophecy, that under the form of sensible things, and by 
means of present outward relations, it gave promise of other 
things yet to come, corresponding in design, but higher and 
better in kind. And hence, when a prophetic word accom- 
panied the type, or pointed to the things which it prefigured, 
it naturally foretold the antitypical under the aspect, or even 



THE PROPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION. 103 

by the name of the typical. At the time the first promise was 
given, nothing of a properly typical nature yet existed to weave 
into the prophetic delineation. There was only the loss of 
nature's heritage of good, and in that loss the triumph of the 
principle of evil ; so that in the prospect held out of an ulti- 
mate recovery, there was room only for a symbolical use of 
what was, or had been, to image what should hereafter be. 
But as the scheme of Providence proceeded on its course, 
bringing from time to time its temporary and partial provi- 
sions of blessing, these commonly became to men of prophetic 
insight the form under which the better and more enduring 
reality presented itself to their view, as well as the pledge of 
its certain realization. We have elsewhere treated of this at 
large, and need not enter into detail concerning it here.* But 
as an evidence how materially the diction thus formed differed 
from that proper to history, we may refer to the simple exam- 
ple of Ezekiel xxxiv, 24 : " And I the Lord will be their God, 
and my servant David a prince among them," where assuredly 
another personage must be understood than the historical 
David; one who in that greater and more glorious future 
would hold relatively to the kingdom of God the same place 
which had been held by the son of Jesse in the best period of 
the past. In any other way it is impossible to extract a suit- 
able meaning from the prediction, and to avoid putting on it a 
sense that is utterly incongruous or puerile. 

'Nov is this all. There are many passages in the prophets in 
which the application to them of a strict and historical literal- 
ism would not only evacuate their proper meaning, but render 
them absolutely ridiculous and inconsistent one with another. 
Nothing, surely, can be more evident to a simple reader of the 
prophetic writings than that one of their great objects, the 
burden not of one or two only, but of many of their predictions 
respecting the Messiah, was to have the hearts of men prepared 
for his coming by a genuine repentance and moral reformation. 
But take the prophecy on this subject in Isaiah xl, and we shall 
find that according to the principle now under consideration, 
it is something quite different which was announced as going 

* " Typology of Scripture," Book I, chap, v, Fourth Ed. 



104 THE PROPHETIC STYLE AXD DICTION". 

to precede the Lord's advent. Referring to the words of the 
prophet and describing his own mission, the Baptist said : " I 
am tlie voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the 
way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for 
our God. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain 
and hill shall be laid low ; and the crooked shall be made 
straight, and the rough places plain." The language, it will 
be observed, understood as a naked and historical delineation 
of what should take place before the Lord's personal appear- 
ance, speaks only of external changes and reforms on the earth's 
surface, such as might more suitably adapt it to purposes of 
travel. But as no beneficial improvements of that description 
in the Baptist's time, nor even to the present day, have been 
accomplished in Palestine, the opinion has been avowed by the 
advocates of historical simplicity and directness in prophecy 
that the prediction still remains unfulfilled ; that in its leading 
import it must refer not to the first, but to the second advent. 
And the thought has even been suggested whether it may not 
refer to that great improvement of modern times, the leveling 
of hills, the elevating of valleys, and straightening of paths, by 
means of railroads ! A happy thought, no doubt, if the object 
for which the spirit of prophecy had kindled the bosom of 
Isaiah had been to light the way to inventions in art and sci- 
ence, or if the essential condition of the Lord's coming to dwell 
among his people was their providing for him the means of an 
easy and rapid conveyance in an earthly chariot ! But before 
this can be admitted, we must entirely change our ideas of 
the Bible, and the purport of Messiah's appearance in a fallen 
world. 

We shall refer to another prediction of Isaiah, found at the 
commencement of the second chapter, where, in speaking of 
the glory of the latter days, he says, ^' It shall come to pass 
that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established on 
the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills ; 
and all nations shall flow unto it." It is spoken absolutely, 
and therefore, if taken as a historical delineation, must be 
regarded as importing that the little elevation of the temple- 
mount shall be projected upward, and made to overtop in 



THE PROPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION. 105 

height the loftiest of the Himalayas; and that, too, for the 
purpose of increasing its attraction as a center of religions 
intercourse to the world, and drawing men in crowds toward 
it from the most distant regions. What a mighty revolution, 
what an inversion even of the natural state of things, this would 
imply it is needless to point out. Yet the interpretation now 
given has often been adopted, as conveying the real meaning 
of the prophecy, if not to the extent of making Zion absolutely 
the loftiest summit on the earth's surface, at least to the extent 
of its elevation above all the hills in that region of the earth. 
So common, indeed, had this view of the upward projection of 
Mount Zion in the latter days become in the time of Edward 
Irving, that we find him excusing himself from not implicitly 
adopting it. He expresses, indeed, his belief that there would 
be '^ some remarkable geographical changes on the face of the 
earth, and especially in the Holy Land," so that he was " far 
from slighting the more literal interpretation of the passage ;" 
yet withal " he inclines to think that the glory of Zion, in the 
eye of the prophet, standeth rather in this, that it shall acquire 
such a celebrity in those days as shall bring low the most noted 
of the mountains of the earth, and the eyes of all men upon it, 
being the center of the worship of the whole world." Even 
the better sort of Jewish rabbles read with a less fleshly eye the 
meaning of the prophet. " It does not mean," says Kimchi, 
" that the mountain shall be raised in bulk, but that the na- 
tions shall exalt and honor it, and shall go there to worship 
the Lord." But we have a surer interpreter here than either 
Jewish rabbles or Christian divines. For the prophet Ezekiel, 
evidently referring to this prediction of Isaiah, connects it with 
circumstances which oblige us to understand the relative eleva- 
tion of the sacred mount, as of a spiritual^ not of a natural 
kind, and as verified in what already has been, not in what is 
yet to be. Representing the seed of David as the subject of 
promise, under the image of a twig of a lofty cedar, and con- 
trasting what the Lord would do to this, with what was to 
become of the twig cropped from the same cedar by the king 
of Babylon, the prophet says in the name of the Lord, " I also 
will take of the highest branch of the high cedar, and will set 



106 THE PROPHETIC STYLE AND DICTIO^s". 

it ; I will crop off from tlie top of his young twigs a tender one, 
and will plant it upon a liigh. mountain and eminent : in tlie 
mountain of the height of Israel will I plant it ; and it shall 
bring forth bonghs, and bear fruit, and be a goodly cedar ; and 
nnder it shall dwell all fowl of every wing ; in the shadow 
of the branches thereof shall they dwell." Chap, xvii, 22, 23. 
There cannot be the smallest possible doubt that the yonng and 
tender twig here mentioned represents Jesus of [N^azareth, the 
Branch, as he is elsewhere called, out of the root of Jesse, and 
represents him in his Jlrst appearance among men, when he 
came in the low condition of a servant, to lay through suffering 
and blood the foundation of his everlasting kingdom. For it 
is of the planting of the twig that the prophet speaks, and of 
its original littleness when so planted, as compared with its 
future growth and ultimate peerless elevation. Yet even of 
those very beginnings of the Messiah's work and kingdom it is 
said, that they were to take place on " a high mountain and 
eminent," on "the mountain of the height (the mountain-height) 
of Israel." So that, as seen in prophetic vision, the elevation 
had already taken place when Christ appeared in the flesh, the 
little hill of Zion had even then become a towering height : in 
other words, it was not the natural, but the spiritual aspect of 
things which was present to the eye of the prophets when they 
made use of such designations. All Israel was in their view a 
height, because distinguished and set up above the nations by 
its sacred privileges ; * Mount Zion was the loftiest peak, as it 
were, in that height, because there was the seat and center of 
what rendered Israel pre-eminent among the nations*: and 
when seen as the place where God, manifest in the flesh, was 
to accomplish the great redemption, and unspeakably enhance 
the good by turning what before was shadow into substance, 
then its moral grandeur became altogether transcendent, and 
all that might be called great and lofty in the world shrank 
into littleness as compared with it. Here now was the world's 
center, the glory that eclipsed every other. 

If it were necessary to our argument, and would not lead us 
too far from our present purpose, we might strengthen the 

* See Ezekiel xxxiv, 14, and the note there in my Commentarj. 



THE PKOPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION. 107 

ground of this interpretation by showing how commonly in 
prophetic language powers or kingdoms, as such, are spoken of 
under the image of mountains, mountains varying in height or 
stability, according to the character and position of the king- 
doms themselves. We merely refer to the fact, (giving a few 
instances in the note,*) and shall find occasion, when we come 
to treat of the positive aspect of the subject, to show the essen- 
tial connection of such a style of representation with the usual 
form in which prophetic insight was given. But from the 
examples already adduced, it is manifest that if we would not 
render prophecy in some parts utterly fantastical, and in others 
plainly inconsistent and contradictory, we need other rules to 
guide our interpretations than that of a strict adherence to 
historical simplicity. Prophecy cannot be always read merely 
as history antedated. And the absolute impossibility of making 
out on such a principle a prophetic harmony, or, to state it 
positively, the inevitable confusion and discord it would intro- 
duce into the prophetic record, may be further seen by a com- 
parison of the diverse and, historically considered, antithetical 
representations that are given of the religious changes that were 
to come in with the Gospel dispensation. Sometimes this ap- 
pears as a revival and perfecting of the old, and sometimes 
again as the entire supplanting of it by something higher and 
better. Thus Isaiah, in certain places, speaks of the future 
glory as consisting in the full re-establishment of the old things, 
the erection of the temple in surpassing magnificence, the rigor- 
ous enforcement of its ritual, and the vying of all nations with 
each other to frequent its courts and celebrate its services, 
(chapter Ix ; Ixi, T, 8 ; Ixvi, 21-23 ;) while in other places he 
pours contempt upon the old as not worthy to be mentioned, 
treats the erection of a material temple, like that which for- 
merly existed, as a thing no longer to be thought of, and holds 
out promises of blessing, which imply the abolition of the ordi- 
nances introduced by Moses. (Chapter Ixv, 17 ; Ixvi, 1-5.) In 
like manner, Jeremiah, setting forth, at chapter iii, 16, the supe- 
riority of the latter days, aftirms that the time was coming 
when they should no more remember or speak of the ark of 

* See Appendix E. 



108 THE PROPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION". 

'the coven ant, nor make such a tMng ; meaning that the peculiar 
sacredness and glory belonging to it should then be more 
widely diffused, not confined to so limited a spot. In another 
place, (chapter xxxi, 31,) he tells us of the supplanting of the 
old covenant entirely by a new one, founded on better promises ; 
and yet passages again occur in which he depicts the full and 
perfect re-establishment of the ancient order of things, as the 
glory of those latter days. (Chapter xxx, 18-22 ; xxxiii, 15-22.) 
To mention no more, Ezekiel's last vision of the brighter future 
presents all under the aspect of a re-edified temple, perfect in 
its structure and arrangements ; while in St. John's last vision 
it takes the form of a holy city, complete in its proportions and 
composed of the most precious materials, but having in it no 
temple. There is a principle, we may be well assured, which 
is quite sufficient to harmonize these different representations, 
and render them perfectly consistent with one another ; but 
no skill or sophistry can ever persuade simple and unpreju- 
diced men that such a harmonizing principle is to be found in 
reading the whole as one would read history, taking all as mat- 
ter-of-fact descriptions of Grospel times, or the millennial age. 
On that principle the contradiction is necessarily real, and we 
have no alternative according to it but that of holding by one 
portion of the prophetic future and letting go another. 

l^or would such be the result merely with what may be still 
regarded as the prophetic fature, and in respect to which end- 
less and fanciful conjectures, for reconciling things which differ, 
may be thrown out ; it would hold equally with what once was 
a prophetic future, but is now the historical past or present ; 
for many of the representations we have noticed point to the 
New Testament dispensation generally, and necessarily bear 
respect to what has already come to pass. Indeed, it is diffi- 
cult to say what a fair and uniform application of the principle 
of historical interpretation to the style of prophecy would leave 
us of prophetical falfiUments. Micah, for example, predicted 
that out of Bethlehem was to come forth He that was to be 
Huler in Israel, the Messiah, as King of Zion. But it is held 
as a settled point by those who read prophecy like history, that 
Messiah has not yet appeared in the character of the King of 



THE PROPHETIC STYLE AJSTD DICTION". 109 

Zion, or Ruler in Israel ; so that we should suppose, the pre- 
dicted coming out of Bethlehem, in the proper sense, has yet 
to take place. In like manner, it must be maintained that he 
shall yet have to make good the prophecy of Zechariah by rid- 
ing into Jerusalem on an ass, since it was distinctively as the 
King of Jerusalem that the act in question was to be per- 
formed by him. We are afraid, indeed, that on this principle 
a large portion of Christ's earthly career, which the Evangelists 
have described as finished, and finished in accordance with the 
intimations of prophecy, must be regarded as still future. For 
when, according to one prophecy of Isaiah, was he actually 
anointed, or oiled, to preach the Gospel to the poor ? or accord- 
ing to another, was precisely his back given to the smiters ? 
Where do we read, in literal conformity with the Psalmist's 
words respecting him, of his ears having been bored ; or of his 
sinking in deep waters where there was no standing ; or of his 
being heard from the horns of the unicorns ? Such things and 
others of a like nature were written concerning Messiah in the 
Psalms and prophets ; and if all were to be ruled by a princi- 
ple of historical literalism, the conclusion seems inevitable that 
the predicted humiliation of the Messiah has been accomplished 
but in part by Jesus of Nazareth : a conclusion which could be 
hailed with satisfaction only by unbelieving Jews, as it is also 
one that is the legitimate result of their own carnal principles 
of interpretation.* 

. To conclude on this point we object to the treatment of pro- 
phecy as merely anticipated history, or to the strictly literal 
principle of prophetical interpretation : First, because in point 
of fact this principle is not justified by all the applications 
made of prophecy in New Testament Scripture, nor by the 
course of Providence in certain cases, at least, which may con- 
fidently be reckoned those of fulfilled prophecy ; secondly, 
because it would necessitate, if uniformly applied and carried 
out, the belief of many things utterly extravagant or absurd, 
as necessary to verify the prophetic word ; and finally, because 
it would render one part of this word manifestly inconsistent 
with another. 

* See Appendix F. 



110 THE PEOPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION. 

These objections, it is to be understood, are not nrged against 
the existence of a historical element in prophecy, but only 
against the mode of ascertaining it ; against the principle, that 
prophecy in its predictive character is written substantially in 
the style and manner of history. While we contend against its 
being so written or interpreted as if such had been the case, 
we still strenuously maintain, that if understood in its proper 
nature, and interpreted in a manner agreeable to that, it will 
be found in many of its announcements capable of yielding 
clear and specific historical results. The prophecy, for exam- 
ple, of Ezekiel recently referred to, not less certainly foretells 
the appearance of the King of Zion in a state of deep humilia- 
tion, the founding of his kingdom amid circumstances out- 
wardly mean, yet of vast spiritual moment, and its subsequent 
growth to universal sovereignty, that it represents all under 
the image of a slender twig planted on the summit of Israel, 
and rising and expanding till it overtopped all the trees of the 
field. In such a representation there are unquestionably in- 
volved conditions of a historical kind, which required to be 
met by definite corresponding facts in evidence; such facts 
precisely as are recorded in the Gospel history. At the same 
time, the prophecy differs materially in the form it assumes 
from that of historical narration; and as regards the events 
actually in prospect, plainly exhibits these in an aspect that 
must have appeared somewhat obscure, till it was shone upon 
and informed by the events themselves. But then, something 
of this kind was necessary to the very evidence which was to 
be furnished to the truth of Scripture by fulfillments of proph- 
ecy. A certain vail required to hang over the prophetic field, 
up to the time that its predictions passed into realities ; other- 
wise there would have been room for the allegation, that the 
palpable clearness of the prophecy had prompted the efforts 
that led to its fulfillment. The allegation in fact has been 
made, in respect to some of the most important parts of the 
prophetic Scriptures. Lord Bolingbroke did not scruple to 
assert that Jesus Christ brought about his own death by a 
series of preconcerted measures, merely to give his disciples the 
advantage of an appeal to the old prophecies. "This was 



THE PROPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION. Ill 

ridiculous enough, (to use the words of Dr. Chalmers ; *) but it 
serves to show with what facility an infidel might have evaded 
the whole argument had these prophecies been free from all 
that obscurity which is now complained of. The best form (he 
adds) for the purposes of argument, in which a prophecy can 
be delivered, is to be so obscure as to leave the event, or rather 
its main circumstances, unintelligible before the fulfillment, 
and so clear as to be intelligible after it." It may be said, 
indeed, that the problem to be solved by prophecy was to speak 
of the future in such a way as to admit of the word being ful- 
filled, before its import was distinctly perceived by the persons 
taking part in the fulfilling of it, and yet to leave no proper 
room to doubt that the things they did constituted the actual 
future pointed to in the prophecy. It were not easy to con- 
ceive a train of circumstances in which these conditions were 
more remarkably met than in those connected with the per- 
sonal appearance and history of Christ in the world. Through- 
out the whole of it prophecies were continually passing into 
fulfillment, and for the most part had become events in provi- 
dence before they either were or could be brought into remem- 
brance by those who were taking part in the transactions. So 
far from its being the prediction which led to the doing of the 
things which accomplished it, it was the doing of the things 
which first suggested the prediction and brought to light what 
had previously lain in a neglected obscurity. In this pecul- 
iarity, therefore, of the structure of prophecy, this felicitous 
combination of light and shade, we have a signal proof of the 
unsearchable wisdom of God, in directing those who uttered 
its predictions. 

It is proper, however, to add, that while the style of prophecy 
always to some extent differs from that proper to history, it is 
not itself uniform in this respect, but is subject to change. It 
purposely spake of the future in " divers manners," accommo- 
dating itself to the diversified circumstances in which it was 
given, and the more specific objects it contemplated. In the 
comparative fullness and frequency of its communications, as 
we had occasion formerly to remark, (chap, ii,) it varied exceed- 

* Works, vol iii, p. 314. 



112 THE PROPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION". 

ingly from time to time ; and as a general rnle, increased in 
proportion to the dangers and difficnlties of the period, or the 
magnitude of the snbjects involved. The same considerations 
naturally had some influence also on the form of the prophetic 
announcements, as to their approaching nearer to the direct- 
ness and circumstantiality of history, or receding fm^ther from 
it. Sometimes general intimations regarding the course and 
issues of things might be enough for the support of faith and 
the ordinary discharge of duty ; while more full and explicit 
announcements of coming events might be called for in circum- 
stances of an unusually perplexing or perilous nature. It was 
in such circumstances that Elijah had to do the work of a 
prophet in Israel. Spiritual wickedness in high places had 
assumed so bold a front that there was the most imminent dan-" 
ger of overwhelming ruin ; and the prophet coming forth as a 
mighty wrestler with the evil, there is an awful force and 
directness in his words ; he speaks as already standing amid 
the scenes which he perceived to be at hand. In like manner, 
Jeremiah, though cast in a different mould from Elijah, yet 
because placed in circumstances of similar backsliding and 
rebuke, speaks often in the plainest terms of approaching 
events ; and in those portions of his writings that relate to the 
nearer future, (such, for example, as chap, xxiv, xxv, xxxi, 1, li,) 
has greatly more of the historical element than in such as point 
to times subsequent to the return from Babylon. Matters of 
fact abound in the one while they are scarcely to be found in 
the other. So also in the Messianic prophecies, as a class, the 
same diversity is observable ; there is more that is general in 
the earlier part, more that is specific in the latter. By far the 
most explicit and circumstantial predictions were reserved for 
the time when the old covenant and its earthly kingdom were 
tottering to their foundations, or existing only in an impaired 
and enfeebled condition. The heart of faith required then more 
special supports to sustain it ; and suiting itself to the necessi- 
ties of the case, the spirit of prophecy began to disclose with 
greater freedom and distinctness the things which concerned 
Messiah's appearance and kingdom, and gave the picture of the 
coming future, if we may so speak, more of a historical setting. 



THE PROPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION. 113 

Xor was this gradual approach to historical distinctness 
required, merely for those who lived in the latter days of the 
Hebrew commonwealth ; it was also necessary for the genera- 
tion that should witness the coming of the Messiah, and those 
of after times. As he was to present himself to their accept- 
ance in the character of a promised Redeemer, certain marks 
of an external kind, to be verified amid the transactions of his- 
tory, were necessary, to assure them that he who should come 
had actually appeared. The vision in this respect must be 
written so plain that no sincere inquirer could fail to perceive 
the correspondence between the promise and the fulfillment. 
But this it could only be by touching at m^y points on the 
common relations and circumstances of life, such as are patent 
to the observation and level to the capacities of the simpler 
order of minds. In such a matter, men could not be left to 
grope their way to the truth by the help merely of internal 
considerations or general characteristics. So that however the 
prophecies which went before may have differed in their style 
of delineation from the histories which followed after the com- 
ing of Messiah, they must still, to accomplish the purpose they 
had in view, have borne distinct reference and furnished a kind 
of pre-historical testimony to certain things that should here- 
after appear in the outward domain of history. 

If due weight be given to the considerations now stated, 
there will be no need for holding some of the prophecies in 
Daniel, (especially chaps, viii and xi,) on account of their his- 
torical details, to be at variance with the essential character of 
prophecy, and therefore liable to the suspicion of having been 
written after the events they refer to. This objection was 
raised so early as the third century by Porphyry, has frequently 
been revived in modern times, and has even quite recently 
been advanced by Dr. Arnold and his followers in this country. 
He holds that delineations like these, cast so much in the 
mould of history, and finding their verification in the affairs 
of the Alexandrian and Maccabean periods, are alien to the 
nature of prophecy, and must have been written after the 
events had taken place. We need not say that such an opinion 

is fraught with most serious consequences in regard to the 

8 



114 THE PROPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION. 

character and integrity of the Old Testament canon; as it 
admits of no doubt that the book of Daniel, with those portions 
included, had its place in the Jewish Scriptures when these 
were acknowledged as of divine authority by our Lord and 
his Apostles, and were declared to have been all given by 
inspiration of God. The argument for the inspiration of the 
Scriptures of the Old Testament as they now exist, would be 
shaken to its foundation if the portions of Daniel referred to 
were displaced from the rank of genuine prophecies. 

But as there is no valid reason of an external kind for such 
a rejection, neither can one be found in the internal objection 
derived from the*historical aspect of the predictions. It is not 
denied that there is somewhat peculiar in the form of those 
predictions ; a form that assimilates them more to the detailed 
and prosaic style of history than is usual in prophecies which 
relate to a future at some distance from the speaker. Yet it is 
to be remembered we have the advantage of reading them after 
the fulfillment of the larger portion, at least, of what they fore- 
told ; whereas Daniel himself, and those to whom the Word 
originally came, lived even before the national revolutions had 
taken place which rendered the fulfillment possible. Hence, 
he speaks of the vision in its most historical parts, as being per- 
fectly dark to himself and others, (chap, viii, 27 ; xii, 4, 8, 9.) 
And so different, after all, is this prophetico-historical delinea- 
tion of things to come, from history in the proper sense, that, 
•as Hengstenberg has remarked,* no one ignorant of the history, 
and with only this prophetical outline in his hand, could make 
his way to any precise and circumstantial account of the events. 
Nor even yet are we free from all difficulties in the interpreta- 
tion ; there is still room at several points, from the mode of 
representation employed, for difference of opinion. And then, 
when we look at the circumstances of the period for whose 
instruction and comfort this portion of Daniel's prophecies was 
more especially intended — that, namely, stretching from the 
rebuilding of Jerusalem to the coming of Messiah — we can 
easily discern an adequate reason for that nearer approximation 
to the historical style which unquestionably characterizes the 

* " Authentic des Daniel," p. 190. 



THE PROPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION. 115 

predictions. Two leading peculiarities distinguished tlie period. 
It was, in the first instance, one of great feebleness and depres- 
sion, and subject throughout to many trying and perplexing 
difficulties, which could not fail to put faith many times to the 
stretch. In such circumstances the people who had returned 
from Babylon with high hopes of the revival of their ancient 
glory were the more likely, from the painful contrast which the 
realities of their position presented, to become disaffected and 
downcast in their minds. For long the infant colony in Judea 
had to struggle for its very existence against the insidious 
attacks of powerful and envious neighbors. And though its 
affairs became more settled and prosperous during the ascend- 
ency of the Persian kings and of Alexander, yet soon again the 
tide of fortune turned, and a period came of which Calvin has 
said that '' if ever there were times of distress, such as might 
tempt men to imagine that God was asleep in heaven and had 
become forgetful of the human race, it was certainly then, 
when the revolutions that took place were bo frequent and so 
various." 

Another peculiarity, however, added very materially to the 
trials connected with these circumstances of outward trouble, 
and rendered some special support and consolation necessary. 
For during the whole of the post-Babylonian period, the theo- 
cratic constitution existed in a kind of anomalous and shattered 
condition. The original ark of the covenant, the center of the 
whole polity, was gone, and the Shekinah, and the answering 
by Urim and Thummim, and even the kingly rule and govern- 
ment, though it had been secured by covenant in perpetuity to 
the house of David. It was to contend, at fearful odds, with 
the difficulties of their position as compared with former times, 
when the members of the ancient covenant had to pass through 
deep waters shorn of these distinctive badges of a proper cov- 
enant relationship. Yet this was not all ; for during that 
period all sensible tokens of God's immediate presence were 
wanting. There was no longer any vision ; the spirit of 
prophecy was silent; and with a closed record, and desti- 
tute of any miraculous agency, the people were left to 
hold on their course as they best could, with no more than 



116 THE PROPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION. 

tlie settled and ordinary means of grace placed at their 
commanid. 

Taking, then, into account the entire circumstances of the 
period between the return from Babylon and the coming of 
Christ, is it to be wondered at ? might it not rather be expected, 
from the whole character of God's dealings with his people, 
that his foreseeing and watchful guardianship should make 
some suitable provision for such a time of need ? It would 
have been precisely such a provision if, along with the prophe- 
cies, pointing the eye of hope to Messiah's appearance and 
kingdom, there were also furnished to the hand of faith a more 
than usually explicit preintimation of the changes and vicissi- 
tudes that should arise during the intervening period ; in par- 
ticular, during that portion of it when the conflict with sin and 
error was to be the hottest. For this would in great measure 
compensate for the failure of the prophetic office, through which, 
in earlier times, direction was given in emergencies, and a sen- 
sible connection maintained between the providence of God 
and the events which befell his people. With such a compara- 
tively detailed exhibition of the coming future in the prophetic 
record, the children of faith could feel that they were not left 
alone in their struggles, but that the eye of God still directed 
every movement, and had descried, as formerly, the end from 
the beginning. And finally, if such a provision by means of 
prophetic delineations was to be made, Daniel, of all the 
prophets during the captivity, or immediately subsequent to it, 
(as Hengstenberg has already noted,) was precisely the one 
fitted for the purpose. " In the impartatiou of prophetical 
gifts God always acts in adaptation to human powers and sus- 
ceptibilities. A man, therefore, like Daniel, who had spent his 
life in the highest employments of the state, must have been 
peculiarly fitted for apprehending aright communications which 
had reference chiefly to political revolutions. The other proph- 
ets held not only the prophetical gift, but also the prophetical 
office ; their utterances bore a distinct reference to their co- 
temporaries. But, with such a relation, the communication of 
so long a series of special revelations was scarcely compatible. 
These were necessarily destined, as indeed is expressly said in 



THE PKOPHETIO STYLE AND DICTIOK. 117 

this book, more for the future than for the present ; while a 
prevailing destination for the present naturally carries along 
with it a direct monitory tendency, and at the same time an 
elevated, predominantly poetical style of discourse, which might 
easily have proved prejudicial to the requisite precision and 
clearness in a case like this. . . . ]^ow Daniel was no 
prophet, so far as office was concerned ; hence, in the prophe- 
cies communicated through him, comparatively little respect 
required to be had to the necessities of the existing generation, 
and their capacity of spiritual apprehension. Nor would an 
elevated poetical diction have here been in its place, as for him- 
self only, in the first instance, did he desire and receive expla- 
nations. And in so wonderful a manner had he been accredited 
by God that men could not venture, on account of what might 
appear of darkness in his revelations, to withhold an acknowl- 
edgment of their divine character, and were only the more 
careful in comparing the prophecy with the fulfillment. Of 
this the books of the Maccabees and Josephus contain indis- 
putable proofs." * 

On the whole, therefore, we conclude that there are material 
differences in form and style between history and prophecy, as 
the distinctive aims and provinces of each are also different ; 
but at the same time that prophecy approximates more nearly 
to the manner of history at one time than another, varying 
considerably in this respect, according to the circumstances in 
which it was given, and the more specific purposes it was 
intended to serve. 

SECTIOlSr II. 

THE PROPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION VIEWED POSITIVELY ITS MORE 

DISTINCTIVE PECULIARITIES. 

The Ground of those Peculiarities, in the Mode of Hevelation 

hy Vision. 

At an early stage of our investigations we had occasion to 
notice the regular and settled method by which divine com- 

* "Die Authentie des Daniel," p. 193. 



118 THE PROPHETIC STYLE AlTD DICTI0:N'. 

mimications were made to tliose who were prophets in the 
ordinary sense, as contradistinguished from the revelations 
given by Moses, and afterward by Christ. In the latter cases, 
the intercourse with heaven was maintained while the mind 
continued in its habitual state, and the divine message was 
received by a face-to-face communication. But in the case of 
the prophets generally it was to be otherwise ; the Lord was to 
" make himself known to them in a vision, to speak to them 
in a dream." ISTum. xii, 6. The Jewish doctors were wont to 
make some distinction between these two : the prophetic vision 
and the prophetic dream. They generally regarded the vision 
as superior to the dream, as representing things more to the 
life, and seizing upon the prophet while he was awake, though 
it often declined into a true dream, as in the case of Abraham. 
(Gen. XV, 12.) The difference, however, as Mr. Smith, of Cam- 
bridge, long since remarked,* seems rather to lie in the circum- 
stantials than in anything essential ; only, as the term vision 
pointed to what was seen, the dream must be understood as 
referring more particularly to what was spoken and heard ; as, 
indeed, the passage itself indicates, ^'maJce known in a \dsion," 
'' speaJc in a dream." But, in regard to the state marked by 
these expressions, the older Jewish interpreters described it as 
one in which the imaginative faculty was set forth as a stage 
on which certain visa and simulacra [appearance and images] 
were represented to the understanding of the prophets, as they 
are in our common dreams ; only that in their case the under- 
standing was always kept awake, and strongly acted on by 
God in the midst of those apparitions, that it might see the 
intelligible mysteries in them. And the Jewish writers re- 
garded this as constituting the specific difference between 
the more ordinary prophetic illumination and the Mosaic de- 
gree, that in the latter the impressions of things were made 
nakedly to the understanding, without any schemes or pictures 
exhibited upon the fantasy. f This ancient view of the pro- 
phetical state is beyond doubt substantially correct. It sup- 
poses the prophet, when borne away by the impulse of God's 
Spirit, to have been transported out of his natural condition 

* "Discourse on Prophecj," chap. ii. f See Smith, as above. 



THE PROPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION. 110 

into a higher, a spiritually ecstatic state, in which, losing the 
sense and consciousness of external objects, he was rendered 
capable of holding direct intercourse with Heaven ; and sur- 
rendering himself wholly to the divine impressions conveyed 
to his soul, he for the moment ceased from his ordinary agency, 
and as one released from the common conditions of flesh and 
blood, entered into the purely spiritual sphere, to see the vision 
and hear the words of the Almighty. It was his, therefore, in 
a degree altogether supernatural, to possess and exercise the 
faculty which the soul ever in some degree exerts in its intenser 
frames of thought and feeling, which it is the part especially 
of the poet's soul, in its loftier moods, to exert ; the faculty of 
withdrawing within itself, closing its eyes and ears against ex- 
ternal impressions, and living as in a world of its own. Like 
this in kind, but far higher in degree, was the ecstacy of the 
divine seer, which transferred the conscious exercise of his 
powers to the region of spiritual things, and placed him in 
direct and free communion with God. 

The fathers seem to have been afraid of conceding quite so 
much concerning the ancient prophets, from its appearing to 
place them in a dangerous resemblance to the heathen diviners, 
and the rhapsodiacal Montanists. A sharp distinction was 
drawn between the ecstacies of such persons speaking in a kind 
of sacred fury, and the conscious spiritual elevation of the true 
prophet. Miltiades is even reported by Eusebius to have writ- 
ten a book on the theme, that a prophet must not speak in 
ecstacy.* In this, however, they did not mean to deny that 
the prophets were in a supernaturally raised and elevated frame 
when they received their revelations ; but only that the excita- 
tion under which they thought and felt was not that sort of 
irresistible agency claimed by Montanism, and assumed in 
heathen divination, which left no room for human individuality, 
and impelled those who experienced it to utter what had no 
place in their own understandings. This appears to have been 
all they meant, as may be learned from Jerome's more explicit 
statement in his preface to Habakkuk, where he vindicates the 

* Hist. Eccl., V, 17. And the same sentiments are expressed by Epiplianius, 
Adv. Haeres. Mont., chap, ii ; Jerome, Praef. in Isaiara, Nahum, etc. 



120 THE PEOPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION. 

prophets from assimilation with Montanists by asserting that 
they were not madmen, as if they had spoken without intelli- 
gence, and had no power over themselves either to speak or to 
remain silent. The jealousy of the fathers in this direction 
naturally led them to contract somewhat unduly the difference 
between the ordinary frame of the prophets and that to which 
they were raised when presented with the visions of God. And 
certainly, in their interpretations of the prophetical writings, 
they often exhibit grievous failures in the correct appreciation 
of the prophetical state in its bearing on the prophetical style. 
But on the other hand some modern writers on prophecy — 
among others Hengstenberg, in the first edition of his " Chris- 
tology '' — seem to go to the opposite extreme in making the 
ecstacy of the prophets approach too closely to the fiavia^ the 
sacred fury of the diviners. Such, undoubtedly, is the impres- 
sion produced when it is said of them in that state that " they 
lost their consciousness," that " their rational powers were sus- 
pended," that they were " completely passive under an over- 
powering influence of the Spirit of Grod." They were, indeed, 
borne aloft by an impulse which lifted them above themselves, 
but at the same time an impulse which destroyed nothing they 
possessed, which left unimpaired their native susceptibilities, 
and wrought in accordance with their personal characteristics. 
So far from their own intelligence and agency being suspended, 
everything in their perceptive and emotional nature moved 
then with living energy and freedom ; they saw, thej heard, 
they felt, they spake, not less than if all had come from the 
spontaneous workings of their own minds, but with a clearness 
of insight and a glow of sentiment which of themselves they 
had been incapable of reaching.* 

* In the last edition of the "Christology," Hengstenberg, I am glad to see, has 
corrected his former view on this subject: he now expressly says, "that we are 
not to regard the prophets as entirely deprived of intelligent consciousness," 
" they did not lose their self-possession, but knew what they said, and spoke with 
a full apprehension of the existing circumstances." At the same time he holds, 
and justly, that "there are not less decisive proofs that the intelligent conscious- 
ness of the prophets was something secondary and superadded, and that when in 
the Spirit they were in a state altogether distinct from their ordinary condition." 
(App. vi.) 



THE PEOPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION". 121 

We must here liold fast by tlie principle wliicli lies at the 
foundation of all right views of the divine agency in the soul, 
and the overlooking of which more than anything else has bred 
perplexity and error on the whole subject of God's inspired 
communications to men : that the supernatural ever bases itself 
on the natural. Grace, in all its acts and provisions, comes 
not to mar or destroy, but only to quicken and exalt and per- 
fect nature. And the Spirit of grace, alike in his more peculiar 
and in his more common operations upon the soul, ever has 
respect to its essential powers and properties, and adapts him- 
self, even in his most special communications, not only to the 
general laws of thought, which regulate the workings of the 
human mind, but also to the various idiosyncrasies and acquired 
habits of particular individuals. While it was altogether of 
the Spirit, therefore, and through a supernatural exercise of his 
power, that prophetical men were raised into the ecstatical con- 
dition, in which they received the vision of things to come, still 
no more when in that condition than in their ordinary frame, 
did the Spirit suspend or control their mental faculties. On 
the contrary, he employed these faculties as his instruments of 
working, and, in doing so, gave the freest scope to their powers 
of thought and utterance, and even to their more remarkable 
pecuharities. We see the undoubted proof of this in the diver- 
sities of manner which characterize the prophetical equally 
with the other portions of inspired Scripture, and which not 
only shed over them the charm of an instructive and pleasing 
variety, but also endow them with a singular adaptation to the 
different tastes and capacities of men. We see it again in the 
use made by one prophet of the writings of another — a use 
made more frequently by none than by those who most dis- 
tinctly relate what passed before them in the visions of God, 
and which, as often as employed, plainly bespoke the intelli- 
gent exercise of the mind's natural and acquired endowments. 
We see it even in the form and materials of the visions them- 
selves, which so uniformly bear the impress of the cast of mind 
and the individual relations of the persons who saw them. 
How strikingly, for example, do the kind of visions seen by 
Ezekiel differ from those reported in Isaiah I And again in 



122 THE PROPHETIC STYLE A15D DICTION. 

Daniel, how widely diiferent from what are met with in the 
prophets, strictly so called^ of the Old Testament ! The point 
of view from which their visions proceeded, was the Church or 
kingdom of God, from which they looked forth at times on the 
states of heathendom that stood related to it, and gave some 
disclosures of their approaching future. But Daniel stood in 
the center, not of the Church's but of the world's power and 
glory, and at that remarkable phase of its history when no 
longer isolated and independent states, but huge and aspiring 
world-monarchies began to strive for the mastery. Accord- 
ingly, it is the worldly power in this concentrated and all-em- 
bracing form which has the prominent place assigned it in the 
visions of Daniel — ^the reflex of the prophet's own peculiar 
position and political environments ; and in that characteristic 
feature of them we perceive the free operation of the natural 
element, as in the wonderful insight they display concerning 
the future movements of Providence, we discern the divine 
element that wrought on the occasion. ]^ay, a further and 
more specific distinction may here be noted, illustrative of the 
principle under consideration. For in the two classes of visions 
in the book of Daniel, in the visions of Nebuchadnezzar as 
compared with those of Daniel, we mark a characteristic differ- 
ence, such as might well have been expected if the native bent 
and the special relations of each were allowed to come into 
play. As presented to the view of ]!^ebuchadnezzar, the worldly 
power was seen only in its external aspect, under the form of a 
colossal image possessing the likeness of a man, and in its more 
conspicuous parts composed of the shining and precious metals ; 
while the divine kingdom appeared in the meaner aspect of a 
stone, without ornament or beauty, with nothing indeed to dis- 
tinguish it but its resistless energy and perpetual duration. 
Daniel's visions, on the other hand, direct the eye into the 
interior of things, strip the earthly kingdoms of their false 
glory by exhibiting them under the aspects of wild beasts and 
nameless monsters, (such as are everywhere to be seen in the 
grotesque sculptures and painted entablatures of Babylon,) and 
reserve the human form, in conformity with its divine original 
and true idea, to stand as the representative of the kingdom 



THE PEOPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION. 128 

of God, whicli is composed of tlie saints of the Most High, and 
holds the truth that is destined to prevail over all error and 
ungodliness of men. In such natural and striking diversities 
as these, who can fail to see an indication of the different frames 
of mind in the subjects of the revelation — a difference stamp- 
ing itself on their respective visions, though the visions them- 
selves in each case came from a higher source ? It is thus that 
the Spirit of God, in his most peculiar workings, shows how 
thoroughly he knows man's frame, and how, in his supernatural 
gifts and operations, he takes the natural as the ground and 
basis of all that is imparted and done. So that, when raised 
by the Spirit into an ecstatical condition, the prophets did not 
lose either their personal consciousness or any distinctive char- 
acteristic they possessed of thought and feeling ; the faculties 
of their intellectual and moral being were allowed their proper 
scope and exercise, and the ideas and imagery they employed 
came in perfect accordance with the mind's ordinary habits and 
associations. 

At the same time, it is not less clear that the state itself in 
which the prophets received their revelations was essentially 
a supernatural one. It was in the most peculiar sense a spirit- 
ual state, in which the soul was carried by a divine impulse 
above the region of sense, and with powers and sensibilities 
strung for the occasion, was brought into immediate contact 
with the things of the Spirit. This is evident even from the 
most common expressions used to denote the prophetical state ; 
such as, " I was in the Spirit and heard," " The hand of the 
Lord was upon me," " The Spirit of the Lord came upon me," 
etc. Ezekiel represents himself not only as thus borne aloft 
out of his ordinary state, but carried to Jerusalem, where he 
said and did certain things of a symbolical and typical nature, 
of course all in vision, (chap, viii, 3 ; xii, 7-16.) St. Paul, 
speaking of what he experienced in that state, (2 Cor. xii,) 
describes himself as unable to tell whether he was in the body 
or out of the body, so completely was the spiritual part of his 
being transferred to that higher sphere, and so thoroughly was 
it for the time loosed from the ordinary conditions of flesh and 
blood. Its activities were all absorbed by what was presented 



124 THE PROPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION. 

to it in the invisible world, and even its experiences (as in 
verse 7) are clothed in an ideal form. In like manner it is said 
of St. Peter, when going to receive in vision a special revela- 
tion concerning the admission of the Gentiles into the Church, 
that an ecstacy fell npon him, (enenEaev ^ir^ avrov sKaraoig, 
Acts X, 10 ;) a supernatural experience, which presented 
objects to his mind that lay beyond the reach of his ordinary 
discernment : which having passed away, he is described as 
again becoming in himself (yevofievog kv kavrCd.) And the 
same apostle, when speaking of the prophetic impulse generally, 
(2 Pet. i, 21,) describes it as carrying those who were the sub- 
jects of it out of their natural condition, raising them into a 
rapt and excited state in which the human in them was 
borne aloft and, in a manner, lost in the divine : "Not by 
man's will was prophecy at any time brought (or borne) in, but 
borne by the Holy Spirit, holy men of God spake." * It was 
not what they themselves thought out, but what they saw and 
heard, and then uttered by divine impulse. Hence, also, the 
occasional excitation of manner, which appeared in the utter- 
ance of the prophecy, after the strictly prophetical state had 
passed away, (2 Kings ix, 11 ; 1 Sam. xix, 24.) 

Now since the prophets, when under divine illumination, 
were thus raised to the higher sphere of the Spirit, having their 
agency for the time being transferred to that sphere, it is but 
natural to suppose that whatever they relate as having been 
spoken or done was spoken and done simply in the Spirit : a 
real transaction, indeed, but a transaction in vision. Whether 
the prophet on any particular occasion might or might not 
expressly state, that the things that he saw, heard, or did, took 
place when he was in ecstasy or vision, the original appoint- 
ment in respect to prophetical communications, that it was in 
vision they were to be imparted, left it to be inferred that 
according to the rule such was actually the case, and that if at 
any time the rule was departed from, and the transactions 
occurred in the external world, very express and unequivocal 
intimation would require to be given. There can be no doubt 
that the more intelKgent portion of the Jewish interpret- 

* See Appendix G. 



THE PEOPHETIC STYLE AI^D DICTION. 125 

ers perfectly understood this, and by just inference, we may 
suppose also the better informed Israelites of earlier times. 
Maimonides gives a clear deliverance upon the subject in his 
More Nevochim. " Know, therefore," says he, " that as it is 
in a dream, a man thinks that he has been in this or that coun- 
try, that he has married a wife, and continued there for some 
certain time ; that by this wife he has had a son of such a name, 
of such a disposition and the like ; precisely so was it with the 
prophetical parables, as to what the prophets see or do in a 
prophetical vision. For whatever those parables inform us 
concerning any action the prophet does, or concerning the 
space of time between one action and another, or going from 
one place to another, all is in prophetical vision. ]^or were 
those actions real to sense, although some particularities may 
be distinctly reckoned up in the writings of the prophets. 
Since it was well known that all was done in a prophetical 
vision, it was not necessary, in the rehearsing of every particu- 
larity, to reiterate that it was in a prophetical vision, as it was 
also needless to inculcate that it was in a dream. But now 
(he adds) the vulgar sort of men think that all such actions, 
journeys, questions, and answers were really and sensibly per- 
formed, and not in a prophetical vision." 

It were well if we could say with Maimonides, that it is only 
the vulgar sort of men, in present times, who understand the 
narrations referred to in this realistic manner. The greater 
part of our popular writers on prophecy take them generally in 
this sense, and not a few also of our more eminent commenta- 
tors. Horsley contends at great length, in the introduction to 
his Commentary on Hosea, for the necessity of interpreting the 
instruction given to the prophet in the first chapter, to marry 
an unchaste woman, and the successive births of children by her, 
of transactions in real life — a view that was held also by Au- 
gustine and many of the fathers in former days, by many Lu- 
theran and reforaied divines, and is still also held by Hofmann 
in Germany, and by Dr. Pusey in this country. Even Dr. 
Alexander, of Princeton, who usually exhibits a correct discrim- 
ination and sound judgment, in his Commentary on Isaiah, at 
chap. XX, 2, where the prophet is commanded by the word of 



126 THE PEOPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION. 

the Lord to loose the sackloth from off his loins, and pull off 
his shoes from his feet, and go naked and barefoot three years 
as a sign and wonder respecting Egypt and Ethiopia, regards 
the account as descriptive of what actually took place in pub- 
lic. ]N^or are there wanting some, who insist upon a like actual 
accomplishment of Ezekiel's appointment (chap, iv) to lie three 
hundred and ninety days at a stretch upon one side, and forty 
days upon another, for a sign to Israel and Judah-— all the 
while fixed down with bands to prevent him from turning from 
the one side to the other — ^his arm, too, constantly uncovered, 
as in the act of prophesying evil, and his food consisting of the 
meanest provisions, and baked with what both nature and the 
law held to be abominable. One might have thought that the 
absolute physical impossibility involved in such cases, if trans- 
ferred to the world of sense, the palpable indecency of food so 
repulsive and nakedness so startling and long-continued, (for 
there is nothing in either case in the descriptions given to 
qualify the fidl import of the language,) might alone have been 
regarded as a clear indication that the spirit of holiness and 
purity could never have intended the instructions to take effect 
in the sphere of ordinary life. 

In so far as the things reported to have been enjoined upon 
the prophet and done by him were of an absurd and fanatical 
or of an unbecoming and illegal character, it has been alleged, 
that if the action were such in real life, it could not be other- 
wise when transferred to an ideal region and done in the 
Spirit : the impropriety would still follow the prophet in his 
visions, and could only be justified there by the special appoint- 
ment of God, which might equally have warranted it in real 
life. But the two cases are entirely different. An internal 
action, it would be readily understood, was prescribed and 
accomplished simply for purposes of instruction, as a represent- 
ative type merely of things that had happened, or were going 
to happen on the outward theater of the world ; in order that 
the characters and procedure it personated, wheth-er good or 
bad, might be more distinctly realized and forcibly impressed 
upon the heart and conscience. If done, however, on the ter- 
ritory of every-day life, it could not be considered in such a 



THE PROPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION. 127 

light. The things belonging to it then necessarily became 
more than types ; they must have had a personal, before they 
could possess a didactic import ; and by multitudes would un- 
doubtedly have been looked at in their more immediate and 
obvious aspect, without a thought of anything further or 
higher. Pursuing a course in itself objectionable, the prophet, 
(who should have stood pre-eminent for sanctity and worth, 
whose prime characteristic was to be conformity to the law of 
God) would inevitably have been subjected to suspicion, or 
covered with shame in the very act of fulfilling his mission. 
He must, to all human appearance, have descended to a level 
with the heated enthusiast, who in the fervor of his inflated 
zeal, or the rashness of his presumption, tramples upon law and 
order. But to use the language of Calvin on the case of Hosea, 
'' It seems not to be consistent vrith reason that God should 
voluntarily have rendered his prophet contemptible ; for how 
could he ever have appeared in public after such ignominy had 
been inflicted upon him ? If he had married such a woman as 
is described, he ought rather to have hidden himself all his life- 
time than have assumed the prophetic office." Besides, many 
of the actions were of a kind to have lost rather than gained in 
impressiveness by being outwardly transacted ; some, as in the 
case of the siege conducted by Ezekiel with tiles, (chapter iv,) 
being of so diminutive a nature, and others, (like the same 
prophet's lying hundreds of days upon his side, or the details of 
Hosea's marriage relation, or Jeremiah's going to hide his 
girdle by the river Euphrates, and returning after many days 
to flnd it marred,) being spread over so wide a space, occupy- 
ing so long a time, or requiring to be performed (if performed 
at all) in 'so secret a manner, that no one could in any proper 
sense be cognizant of the performance. If presented all at 
once as an acted lesson ; a rehearsal of what had taken place 
in that ideal world, where the prophet in his entranced condi- 
tion lived and moved as in the presence of God, then the 
action being seen at once in its completeness might immedi- 
ately produce its proper effect. But if seen only in fragments, 
as it must have been if outwardly performed, the action as a 
whole would have been in great measure unintelligible, and 



128 THE PEOPHETIC STYLE AlH) DICTION. 

in a moral respect could have conveyed no certain and definite 
impressions. It was after all, by tlie narrative of tlie story 
with its accompanying explanations, that the desired resnlt in 
either case mnst have been reached. 

To all this the further consideration may be added in respect 
to the argument derived from the moral impropriety of certain 
of the actions, that as those typical actions of the prophets in 
general stood in a close relation to parabolical representations, 
and were essentially indeed of the same description, so in these 
also we find an occasional use made of circumstances which the 
Lord never could have directly countenanced in any real trans- 
action. Such, for example, is the parabolical representation in 
the twenty-third chapter of Ezekiel, where the story of Israel's 
calling, guilt, and punishment is exhibited under the figure of 
two women, both of them received into marriage relationship 
to God, and acting unfaithfully to the marriage vow. Suck 
also, in the parables of the New Testament, are those of the 
unjust steward (the type in a particular aspect of true wisdom) 
and of the unmerciful servant ; in both of which, things in 
themselves morally improper form to some extent the basis of 
representations pertaining to the kingdom of Grod. In these 
cases the Lord showed that he could make an ideal use of 
earthly relations and affairs to image the truths of his kingdom, 
such as on the territory of real life he could have commissioned 
no one to employ ; and why should it be thought to have been 
otherwise in respect to the ideal world of prophetic revelation ? 
There^ simply because it was ideal, and intended to present a 
faithful image of the actual world, in its guilt and punishment, 
as well as its privileges and hopes, scenes required to be occa- 
sionally enacted with the divine sanction which c6uld have 
had no place in the actual life of God's true servants. Under- 
stood to be representative, and teaching actions in the purely 
spiritual sphere, nothing they might contain of an unbecoming 
nature could produce the pernicious effect which must have 
attended it had it obtruded itself on the senses ; it was for the 
mind alone to contemplate, and it would naturally do so with 
a respect to the moral bearing of the representation. 

It is humiliating to reflect how clearly the right principle of 



THE PEOPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION. 129 

interpretation on this part of the subject was perceived, and 
deduced from its proper source, namely, revelation bj vision, 
two centuries ago, bj Mr. Smith of Cambridge, and how often 
it has been missed or but partially apprehended since. He 
states that ''though it be not always positively laid down in the 
'' prophetical narrations that the transactions were in a vision, 
yet the nature and scope of prophecy required that things 
sliould be acted in imagination, (the imagination being the pro- 
phetical scene or stage on which all apparitions were made to 
the prophet,) and we should rather expect some positive decla- 
ration to assure us that they were performed in the history, if 
indeed it were so. The things which God would have revealed 
to the prophet were acted over symbolically in his imagination, 
as in a masque, in which divers persons a rebrought in, among 
whom the prophet himself bears a part ; sometimes by speak- 
ing and reciting things done, or propounding questions, some- 
times by acting that part in the drama which was appointed 
him by others. It is, therefore, no wonder to hear of those 
things being done which, indeed, have no historical or real 
verity ; the scope of all being to represent something strongly 
to the prophet's understanding, and sufficiently to inform it in 
the substance of those things in which he was to instruct those 
to whom he was sent. And so, sometimes, we have only the 
intelligible matter of prophecies delivered to us nakedly, with- 
out the imaginary ceremonies or solemnities." 

But have we not, it may be asked, undeniable evidence that 
the symbolical actions ascribed to the prophets were, sometimes 
at least, performed on the outward theater of life ? Allowing 
this, however, to have been the case, it cannot materially affect 
the general result. The normal state of the prophets, when 
they were receiving divine communications, was that of ec- 
(Stasy, and while in ecstasy their proper sphere was not the 
external, but the internal world ; it was the region of spirit as 
contradistinguished from that of sense and time. And tliough 
there might be symbolical actions performed by them also in 
real life, yet the circumstances are such as to warrant our ex- 
pecting clear evidence of their having been so, and even then 
regarding them as exceptions to the general rule. There are 



130 THE PEOPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION. 

recorded examples of this description, cases in wMch the action 
has a place in the narrative of sacred history, and is surrounded 
by other historical transactions. In such cases, undoubtedly, 
it must be held to be of the same character with the rest, and, 
like them, accomplished on the visible theater of earthly affairs : 
as in the notice (1 Kings xx, 35-43) of the prophet, who dis- 
figured his person, and requested others to smite him, as a sign 
of tho Lord's judgment on the Syrians ; or in the account given 
by Jeremiah (chapter xxviii) of the yoke upon his neck, seized 
and broken before the people by the false prophet Hananiah. 
The action with the yoke is there imbedded in details of his- 
tory, and must necessarily be understood as itself of the same 
class. Indeed, it is only the circumstance, which incidentally 
comes out, of Jeremiah having a yoke upon his neck, which can 
properly be regarded as a symbolical action of the kind under 
consideration, and which seems to have been done by him as a 
realistic fulfillment of the word that came to him in the pre- 
ceding chapter, " Make thee bonds and yokes, and put them 
upon thy neck." In 'New Testament times, also, we have 
the undoubted case of Agabus binding himself with a girdle, as 
a symbolical pre-intimation of the approaching imprisonment 
of St. Paul. Such recorded actions, however, differ from those 
previously referred to, and, indeed, from the mass of symbolical 
actions described in the prophetical writings, in that they ap- 
pear, not in the account of a divine message communicated by 
God to the prophet, but as parts of a historical narrative, 
where all must necessarily have been of a homogeneous na- 
ture. They differ also from the greater portion in being so ob- 
viously and transparently typical in their character, that their 
symbolical import could scarcely fail to be apprehended at the 
very first, and perceived to be the sole reason of their appoint- 
ment. 

The general conclusion, then, we would draw from what we 
have stated, may be thrown into the following principle of in- 
terpretation : As, according to the rule, divine communica- 
tions were to be made to the prophets in ecstasy or vision, so 
whenever Ave have to do merely with the record of these com- 
munications, the actions related as well as the things seen and 



THE PEOPHETIC STYLE AKD DICTION. 131 

heard, should be understood to liave occurred in the spiritual 
sphere of prophetic revelation ; and outward reality is to be 
predicated of any of them, only when the account given is such 
as to place the symbolical act in undoubted connection with 
the facts of history. Or it may be put thus : The actions are 
to be held as having taken place in the spiritual sphere alone, 
if they occur simply in the account of God's communications 
to the prophet ; but in actual life, if they are found in the nar- 
ration of the prophet's dealings with the people. In the one 
case the mere publication of the account constituted the mes- 
sage from God ; while in the other, an embodied representation 
was given of it in the outward act. Such a rule may leave us 
in some doubt as to certain cases in the history of prophetical 
agency ; but they will be found to be extremely few. It may 
not, perhaps, conclusively determine whether all the transac- 
tions recorded in Isaiah, chaps, vii and viii, respecting the 
prophet's two sons by the prophetess, and the messages given 
him to Ahab and his people, belong to the spiritual alone, or 
also to the actual sphere, though the natural impression from 
the narrative is that they belong to the former; since the 
whole account seems to refer merely to the Lord's communica- 
tion to the prophet, and the going to the prophetess to have 
sons by her, which forms part of the transactions, would infer, 
if understood otherwise than as an ideal matter, an impurity 
not to be named or thought of in such a connection. In like 
manner the account in Jeremiah, chaps, xviii and xix, of that 
prophet's being instructed to go to the potter's house, in the 
valley of the son of Hinnom, and there «ee and speak several 
things, may not with perfect certainty be assigned to either 
the ideal or the actual sphere by the application of our princi- 
ple ; yet, as in the case previously noticed, the presumption 
manifestly is on the ideal side, since the whole narrative carries 
the aspect simply of what passed in the region of the prophet's 
communings with God, and appears to relate to the message 
he got to deliver, not to the account of its delivery. For almost 
every other case the rule laid down will be found sufficient. In 
particular, it will certainly lead us to regard the many symbol- 
ical actions in Zechariah and Ezekiel as having taken place in 



132 THE PKOPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION. 

vision, not excepting that in Ezekiel xxiv, respecting tlie death 
of the prophet's wife, and the charge to refrain from mourning 
on account of her. For the entire chapter is in the form of a 
direct communication to the prophet, conveying instruction he 
was to impart to the people ; and so at verse 25, immediately 
after the account of the action, and without a break, the Lord 
is represented as continuing his address to the prophet, and 
saying, " And thou. Son of man, shall it not be in the day that 
I take from them their strength," etc.* 

It is only necessary to add further, that the mode of revela- 
tion by vision, which was common to all the prophets in the 
strictest sense, appears, like other supernatural gifts, to have 
existed in different degrees of power and completeness ; in the 
more expostulatory and didactic parts of the prophetical writ- 
ings, (such as Ezekiel xviii, the larger portions of Hosea, Hag- 
gai, Malachi,) it may have been imperfectly either needed or 
conferred ; but it rose to its highest form in the case of those 
who may be called by way of eminence, apocalyptists. These 
were, more especially, Daniel in the Old Testament, and the 
Apostle John in the l^ew. iJ^ot that there was anything abso- 
lutely peculiar to these two prophets, for every real prophet is 
so far an apocalyptist, that it is given him in some measure to 
take off the vail {aTroKaXvKretv) from things spiritual and divine. 
But the persons in question were called to do this in a some- 
what peculiar and superabundant measure. Both of them 
were placed by the events of God's providence in a remote 
and isolated position, so as to be precluded from speaking 
directly to the Church then present ; and they had by way of 
compensation, the honor assigned them of speaking more spe- 
cially and peculiarly than others to the Church of the future. 
In respect to this future they stood upon a loftier altitude, and 
had visions of things to come more explicit, also more continu- 
ous and detailed, than were afforded to any of the other proph- 
ets. The perspective of the Church's history was in a manner 
mapped out before them; in particular as regards the long- 
continued and bloody struggle between Christian truth and 

* This case and others iu Ezekiel may be seen examined at some length in mj 
Commentary on that prophet. See also Appendix H. 



THE PEOPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION". 133 

antichristian error, and its final termination on the side of 
righteousness. In Daniel this great struggle first assumes its 
more definite and concrete shape, as a mortal conflict between 
two kingdoms with their appropriate heads and vital agencies ; 
and the theme is resumed by the apostle, in connection at once 
with a larger battle-field and with mightier forces, and con- 
ducted to its final close. Hence, also, from the more distinctly 
marked apocalyptic character of the two books, it is first in 
Daniel that several distinct phases of the kingdom of G-od are 
brought out — that mention is made of a typical as well as of 
an antitypical antichrist — and of an earlier appearance of 
Messiah in humiliation to suffer and die, quite apart from 
another, in power, dominion, and glory ; while it is by St. 
John that the interval is properly filled up which separates 
between the first and second advents of Christ. These men, 
therefore, were emphatically the Church's apocalyptists, and 
had most of those visions which un vailed her future fortunes 
and destiny. 

SECTION III. 

First Peculiarity of the Style and Diction of Prophecy — 

Poetical Elevation. 

That a poetical element enters largely into the composition 
of the prophetical writings requires no proof. The fact is on 
all hands admitted ; and the only points respecting it that can 
be termed disputable, or that call for explanation, are the 
grounds of its existence, and the effect it should exercise on the 
interpretation of the writings themselves. It was the fashion 
at no remote period with biblical scholars to regard these 
writings of the prophets as if they simply belonged to the poet- 
ical remains of the Hebrews. Some of the ancient nations, 
among others the Hebrews, had but one name for poet and 
prophet, (vates ;) and it was thought that with the Hebrews 
also every prophet must be a poet, and every poet to some 
extent a prophet. It hence naturally arose, that the measure 
in which the prophetical gift was possessed, was supposed to be 
in proportion to the degree in which the poetical property was 



134 THE PEOPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION. 

displayed, and tlie proplietical books were assigned to a golden 
or a silver age according to their rank as poetical compositions. 
The more exact and discriminating spirit of recent times has 
led, in this as in other things, to a juster perception of the 
essential characteristics respectively belonging to the propheti- 
cal and the poetical departments ; to a discernment of the dif- 
ferences as well as the agreements subsisting between them, 
even on the part of those who are still disposed to look at the 
sacred writings too much in the light of human productions. 
Thus Ewald in the present day devotes two entirely separate 
pubhcations to what in the last century was comprised in one, 
both by Lowth in this country, and by Herder in Gemiany. 
Instead of a single work on Hebrew poetry, including the writ- 
ings of the prophets as a part of the whole, he treats in one 
work of the poetical, and in another of the prophetical portions 
of the Old Testament. In his introduction to the prophetical 
books, Ewald also correctly distinguishes between the manner 
proper to the prophet and that of the poet. " The distinctive 
characteristic," he says, " of the prophetical representation lies 
peculiarly in this, that it is not confined to any precise mode ; 
but as its aim rises above all kinds of human discourse, so it 
avails itself of all, according as they are best adapted to that 
aim. The poet has his definite manner, and cannot so readily 
change and vary it, for his immediate aim is not to work upon 
others ; he must satisfy himself and the requirements of his 
own art. But the prophet will and must work upon others ; 
nay, work upon them in the most direct and impressive man- 
ner ; and so for him every method and form of representation 
is right which carries him straightest to his end." * 

This strong practical tendency in the prophets operated in 
various ways to check and regulate the poetical element in 
their writings, as it did, indeed, in the inspired productions 
generally. Their primary aim throughout, as we have had 
occasion once and again to notice, is of a moral kind ; to 
influence the heart and conscience is their main object. Even 
in the more strictly poetical portions, therefore, the imaginative 
faculty could never be allowed uncontrolled play, as it may be 

• * Propheten, i, p. 31. 



THE PROPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION. 135 

in the higher productions of human genius ; nor, like these, 
could it clothe itself in external forms of a very artificial and 
complicated nature. All had to be kept subservient to the 
higher ends of spiritual instruction, and only such peculiarities 
in rhythm and structure could be employed as were compatible 
with the simple measures of Hebrew parallelism. The very 
structure of Scripture as a book, the comparative freedom and 
simplicity even of its artificial forms, bears evidence to the 
deep-toned ethical spirit that pervades it. 

But this is said merely of the restraint under which the 
poetical element was necessarily held in Scripture, not of its 
entire suppression. The regulated use of that element, so far 
from being inconsistent with, was fitted materially to promote 
the spiritual ends of the word of God. Poetry of a certain kind 
is proverbially a powerful instrument for swaying the hearts 
and moulding the manners of a people. And, accordingly, 
when a form of instruction was to be prepared by Moses, 
which might go down to succeeding generations, and work 
with special and sanctifying energy upon the minds of all, a 
sublime and stirring lyrical song was the result, instinct 
throughout with the fire and elevation of poetry. (Deut. xxxii.) 
But in its ordinary functions — in that function more especially 
in which it had to do with the varying aspect of the times, and 
the pre-intimation in connection with them of things to come — 
prophecy was too directly and energetically practical in its 
aim to admit so much of a poetical nature as might be proper 
in a sacred ode or song. And a comparison of such portions 
of Scripture with those that are more strictly prophetical, of 
the last chapter of Ilabakkuk, for example, with the two pre- 
ceding chapters in the same book, will show at once in how 
subdued a form the poetical spirit usually works in the pro- 
phetical portions, as compared with the others, and how much 
they partake of the direct and simple style proper to oratory. 
Not only so, but as a large proportion of the communications 
of prophecy came in the guise of symbolical actions, the mere 
description of these actions would manifestly be, for sucii parts, 
the appropriate form ; as in such cases the poetical element 
consisted in the things described rather than in the tiiode of 



136 THE PROPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION. 

depicting them. And, generally, tlie more nearly prophecy 
approached in its character to history, it always of necessity 
partook less of the higher characteristics of poetry. 

Such, however, it must be understood, were differences in 
degree, not in kind. Prophecy, in the more distinctive sense, 
never altogether lost a poetical impress, whether in the form 
of its representations or in the language in which it clothed 
them. And in the larger and more important part of its com- 
munications, it stands more nearly allied to the poetical than 
to any other species of composition which we can name. ITor 
did this arise fortuitously, or depend merely upon the choice, 
the individual temperament, or the natural endowments of the 
persons employed in inditing it ; for in the prophetical writ- 
ings the simplest narratives and the most practical addresses 
are sometimes found in close juxtaposition with highly colored 
and ornate descriptions. Now the language bespeaks the pro- 
foundest repose, and again the most powerful emotions ; in one 
part, a spirit of calm reflection seems to breathe in it ; in an- 
other, it indicates a state of lofty excitation. And herein, 
especially, is to be sought the ground of the poetical element 
in prophecy. It was in vision that the prophet received the 
revelations given to him, and in uttering them he naturally 
spoke as in an ecstatic or elevated frame of mind — the same in 
kind with that of the poet's, however superior in the spiritual 
insight connected with it. So that what has been finely said 
of the one, may be understood also of the other. It is " of 
imagination all compact :" 

" And as imagination bodies forth 
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen 
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing 
A local habitation and a name." 

For here again the great law of the Spirit's working comes 
into operation — the supernatural bases itself on the natural. 
In the gifts of grace generally, and still more in those possessed 
and exercised by prophetical men, while the Spirit carries the 
soul above nature, he does not set it on modes of thought and 
speech which are at variance with its own constitutional tend- 
encies. Under the divine afflatus, the mind acts with as much 



THE FEOPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION. 137 

freedom and spontaneity as when left to the unassisted opera- 
tion of its own powers. And, as might be expected, when the 
minds of the prophetical men were raised through the Spirit to 
that state of ecstatical elevation in which they saw the vision 
and heard the words of the Almighty, they naturally disclosed 
the revelations they obtained in a correspondingly elevated 
tone. Thoughts conceived, messages taking shape in such a 
frame, could not possibly keep the level of ordinary discom-se, 
or even in language follow the beaten track. They must rise 
above the common and familiar, because the subjective condi- 
tion of the speaker was above it. 

Bishop Lowth, in his work on Hebrew poetry, failed to con- 
nect properly the character of the prophetical diction with the 
nature of the prophetical state ; but he describes, with his usual 
taste and discrimination, the influence of the poetical excitation 
on the language of those who experienced it. " The first," he 
says in his Third Prelection^ " and chief source of the poetical 
diction is the powerful excitation of the mind. For what else 
is that frenzy peculiar to poets which the Greeks, ascribing it 
to a divine afflatus, called tv-dovataoiiog^ than a manner of dis- 
course, prompted by the very condition of nature, and exhibit- 
ing the true and exact image of a mind moved by some power- 
ful impulse, since it lays open as it were the innermost depths 
and recesses of the mind, and shows its profoundest feelings in 
their most troubled, agitated, and disjointed state. Hence 
sudden exclamations, frequent interrogatives, addresses even to 
inanimate objects ; for, to those who are much moved them- 
selves, everything around appears to participate in the same 
commotion." And in regard to the style, " It is the tendency 
of all poetry, and especially of the Hebrew, anxiously to avoid 
familiar language, as well in the choice of words as in the 
structure of sentences, to cultivate a certain peculiar and 
polished form of speech." 

This description applies, of course, only in part to the writ- 
ings of the prophets ; for, as has been already stated, from the 
nature and object of their calling, the prophets were not limited 
either to one form of representation, or to one species of diction. 
In those parts, for example, which consisted in the rehearsal 



138 THE PKOPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION. 

of symbolical actions performed in vision before the Lord, the 
prophet's excitation, as well as the divine communication, ap- 
peared in the actions themselves ; and the narrative style, with 
some slight deviations, was the one naturally adopted. In 
other parts the symptoms of poetical elevation might be ex- 
pected to vary, as it suited the occasion and object of the reve- 
lation to restrain or foster the ecstatical impulse. But looking 
to the prophetical discourse generally, and making no account 
of extremes either way, it has beyond doubt a form and impress 
of its own. " On the one hand," to use again the words of 
Ewald,* " it was too elevated in its matter and tone for sinking 
down to simple prose ; and, on the other hand, too much des- 
tined for working immediately upon the life, to depart so far 
and wide from ordinary discourse as to assume a complete 
poetical form. Therefore it moves between the two, and in 
such a manner that internally it always appears aspiring and 
reaching after poetic elevation, while externally it acts with 
more freedom and familiarity, in order to operate directly upon 
the life, and at the same time not altogether lose the quality 
of oratorical fullness and flexibility. From the intermingling 
of these two forces has arisen its quite peculiar form. This 
form is of a determinate and settled nature, and in particular 
is fully established in the form of the words, the structure of 
the sentences, and the development of the whole after its parts ; 
rising, however, as might be expected, from its intermediate 
character, in some prophets more, in others less, to a proper 
poetical elevation." 

Ewald goes into some details in proof of these linguistic pe- 
culiarities, and points out certain characteristic differences and 
agreements, first in the selection of words, and then in the use 
of parallelisms and strophe-arrangements, between the prophet- 
ical diction and that of poetry strictly so called. Compara- 
tively little, however, can be made within a brief compass of 
such an investigation : as the usages of which it makes account, 
when viewed singly, can scarcely be said to indicate results 
quite imiform and conclusive. In the general it may doubt- 
less be asserted, without any chance of contradiction from those 

* Propheten, i, p. 46. 



THE PROPHETIC STYLE AND DICTIOi^. 139 

who are intimately acquainted with the books of the Old Test- 
ament, that whatever distinguishes Hebrew poetry from He- 
brew prose is found, though after a somewhat modified man- 
ner, in the prophetical writings. In these also rare expressions 
and pecuHar forms of words are often put in the room of those 
which were in common use, the concrete are preferred to the 
abstract, the tone is grave, elevated, sonorous, and the sentences 
are, for the most part, regular and harmonious, but occasionally 
also concise and abrupt. 

Apart, however, from such peculiarities in the use of words 
and the structure of periods, the poetical elevation appears in 
the strongly idealistic or imaginative form, which the delinea- 
tions and addresses of the prophets very commonly assume. 
Instead of speaking in the severe and exact style of history, 
they delight rather to throw around the actual world the life 
and luster of a higher sphere ; so that symbols to their view 
often take the place of realities ; inanimate objects appear with 
the properties of sentient beings ; the past seems to live again 
in the future ; and, overleaping the gulf of ages, the dead of 
former generations are seen still prolonging their existence, 
and consciously intermingling in the affairs of men. Examples 
of such forms of poetical license will readily suggest themselves 
to those who are in any measure conversant with the prophet- 
ical writings. It is scarcely possible, indeed, to look into any 
portion of these without lighting on some of them. As when, 
to point only to a few specimens, Zechariah symbolizes the 
power of the world, in its opposition to the kingdom of God, as 
a great mountain, and then addresses it as a real and sensible 
object, capable of thought and feeling , " "Who art thou, O great 
mountain? Before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain," 
(chapter iv, Y ;) or when Joel identifies the invading host of the 
Chaldeans with the ravages of a horde of locusts, describing the 
operations of the one under those of the other ; (chapters i, ii ;) 
or when Hosea (chapter ii) and Ezekiel (chapter iv, xx) rep- 
resent the memorable period of chastisement appointed in for- 
mer times to the covenant people in the wilderness, as coming 
back again in their future history ; or when, as in numberless 
passages, the patriarchal heads of the Israelitish nation, or Ziou 



140 THE PKOPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION. 

and Jerusalem, their religious and political center, are addressed 
as living personalities, present to tlie mind and eye of the 
prophet. We refrain here from entering into any particular 
examination of such cases, the rather as those of them which 
involve any peculiar difficulty in the interpretation either have 
been already, or will yet be, considered in another connection. 
"We shall, however, briefly advert to two passages, which are 
both, in respect to form, examples of the same kind of idealism, 
and have also both suffered from the same mistaken disposition 
to get rid of the poetical element in prophecy, and substitute 
for it the historical. One of these is Jer. xxxi, 15, " Thus saith 
the Lord ; A voice was heard in Kamah, lamentation, and bitter 
weeping, Rachel weeping for her children refused to be com- 
forted for her children, because they were not." It is the pass- 
age itself, not the application made of it to an event in Gospel 
history, of which we have now to speak ;* and in particular the 
singular personification embodied in it of Rachel. This is to 
be explained from the poetical elevation of the prophet, in con- 
nection with the circumstances of the time. It was at Ramah, 
as we learn from Jeremiah xl, 1, that the Chaldean conqueror 
assembled the last band of Jewish captives, preparatory to their 
being sent away after the others, to the land of the enemy. 
And as their going thither had, to the eye of sense, all the ap- 
pearance of a perpetual exile ; as with them, indeed, the last 
hope of Israel's existence as a nation seemed to expire, the an- 
cestral mother of the tribe within whose bounds the captives 
were assembled, is by a strikingly bold yet touching imperson- 
ation conceived of as present at the scene, and as raising a loud 
wail of distress, cherishing even an inconsolable grief, because 
getting there, as she naturally imagined, the last look of her 
helpless offspring. This peculiar form is employed merely as 
a cover, under which to give a more impressive exhibition of 
the apparently hopeless prostration to which matters had been 
reduced, and the prospect which in spite of it the power and 
faithfulness of God did not hesitate to unfold of better days to 
come. But no one, surely, needs to be told that it is a form 

* See the passage, considered in that respect, in "Typology of Scripture," voL 
i, p. 406, 



THE PROPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION. 141 

very different from wliat is wont to be found, or could with 
any propriety be nsed in history ; a form indeed conceived in 
the very highest style of poetry. 

In this respect the other passage also is essentially alike, 
and differs only in softening a little the bolder features of the 
image. It is the last prediction of the Old Testament, " Be- 
hold, I will send you Elijah the prophet, before the coming of 
the great and dreadful day of the Lord : and he shall turn the 
heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the chil- 
dren to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a 
curse." Here again the past and the future are contemplated 
as at once present to the eye of the prophet ; generations far 
asunder in point of time appear together upon the same scene, 
on the one side the godly fathers of the Jewish people, on the 
other their degenerate offspring in the days of the prophet and 
subsequent times ; the two alienated from each other on ac- 
count of the entirely different feeling respectively entertained 
by them toward the covenant of God ; and, to effect a proper 
reconciliation between them, and have all if possible prepared 
for the coming of the Lord, the sending anew of him who was 
pre-eminently the prophet of reformation, the man whose whole 
striving in a like degenerate age was directed to the object of 
having the hearts of the people turned back again to the God 
of their fathers, in whom, as the only proper center of union, 
the hearts of fathers and children could meet and embrace each 
other. Thus understood, the meaning of the passage is plain ; 
and the mode of representation is so natural, so accordant with 
the genius of prophecy, in spirit also so entirely at one with 
the tendency of the writings of Malachi, which perpetually aim 
at the restoration of a backsliding people to the bond of the 
covenant and the piety of better times, that it at once com- 
mends itself to our approval. But it is altogether of a piece. 
The poetical element which moulds it into such a peculiar form 
belongs to one part as well as to another ; it is throughout an 
ideal representation. And we should no more imagine that, 
for its fulfillment, the literal Elijah was at some future time to 
resume his place among men as a preacher of repentance, tlian 
tlmt the pious forefathers of Israel were personally to arise from 



142 THE PEOPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION. 

the dead and receive with a hearty embrace their converted 
children, or, to recnr to the prophecy of Jeremiah, that Rachel 
was actually heard, at the Babylonish exile, in the neighbor- 
hood of Ramah, bewailing her loss of children. In truth, 
neither Elijah nor the fathers seemed to need resuscitation 
for such a purpose ; they are viewed as still living and present, 
the one ready to be sent on a fresh mission of reform, and 
the other to welcome those on whom it should take practical 
effect. 

These remarks and illustrations may suffice in regard to the 
ground of the poetical element in prophecy, and the indications 
in form and language which are there given of it. They apply 
chiefly to the prophetical writings of the Old Testament, as 
these constitute by far the largest portion of the revelations 
which were received in the ecstatical state, the real source of 
the poetical element in prophecy. There is only one book of 
the 'New Testament which had its origin in such a state : the 
Revelation of St. John. And there can be no question that it 
is beyond comparison the most poetical book of the New Testa- 
ment. Though belonging to an age in many respects unlike 
that of the ancient prophets, and consisting chiefly of narra- 
tions of what was seen and heard in the spiritual sphere, yet 
both in its general diction and in the attributes of its particu 
lar style, it bears the evident marks of the poetical impress. 
Indeed, it is on this ground we are to explain, and can explain 
with perfect satisfaction, the characteristic differences between 
the apocalypse and the other writings of John himself; differ- 
ences which have been of late diligently searched out and mag- 
nified for the purpose of connecting the apocalypse with another 
and inferior authorship than that of the apostle. Its more 
Hebraistic style; its scenic representations and fragmentary- 
like form ; its disuse of expressions common in the other writ- 
ings of the apostle and frequent resort to other expressions sel- 
dom or never found there ; its many solecisms, full-toned 
periods, perpetual recurrence to objects in the natural world, 
(seas, hills, trees, sun, moon, stars, and such like,) as forms, 
under which to present others somewhat resembling them in 
the political and moral world, are all to be traced to that one 



THE PROPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION. 14:3 

source; and when properly viewed, they are a proof of the 
divine origin and genuine apostolicity of the Book.* 

The age of the apocalypse, we have said, was a very different 
one from that of the Old Testament prophets. It differed pri- 
marily in the comparative completeness of its revelations, 
which, by unfolding the redemption itself that had been so 
long waited for, have rendered the dispensation of the Gospel 
pre-eminent in light and truth. And this principally it was 
that ga^e rise to another difference which appears on the very 
face of the New as compared with the Old Testament revela- 
tions, that they have greatly less of the predictive in matter, 
and still less of the poetical in form. An incidental allusion 
is made to this difference in the second epistle of Peter, ii, 1, 
where the apostle draws attention to a resemblance that was 
to exist between Old and 'New Testament times, but so as at 
the same time to indicate a difference : " There were false 
prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false 
teachers among you;" implying that teachers now were to 
occupy relatively the same place that prophets did under the 
preceding dispensation. The fundamental reason of this com- 
parative diminution of the prophetic element in New Testa- 
ment scripture, and by consequence also of the poetical, lies in 
this ; that the ecstatic, which properly belongs to a supernat- 
ural and temporary state of things, has lost its more immediate 
and necessary ground by the bringing in of the greater things 
of the Gospel. All has now reached a higher elevation. 
What before was supernatural, has become in a manner nat- 
ural ; and things once but dimly descried on the lofty watch- 
tower of prophetic vision, are seen as in the clear light of day 
by the ordinary disciples of Jesus. Placed on such a high 
vantage-ground, the Church of Christ no longer depends for 
her stability and encouragement as the Church of old did, on 
Buch partial and fitful glimpses into the future as holy seers 
might at times be permitted to enjoy. And far more elevating 
and powerful in their influence on the soul than the glowing 
effusions of Hebrew poesy are the sublime and simple records 
of the Gospel. In the wonderful facts there presented, with 

* See " Hengstenberg on the Revelation," voL ii, p. 436, eq. Trans. 



14A: THE PEOPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION. 

the many soul-inspiring truths and ennobling prospects insepa- 
rably connected with them, are treasured materials in ample 
abundance, such as a sanctified imagination might work into 
the finest creations of poetry. But this it was rather for the 
Church herself to do in the course of ages by the hand of her 
more gifted sons, than to have it done once for all, and stereo- 
typed forever by the pen of prophets and apostles on the page 
of inspiration ; the more so as the things themselves were not 
for a single land or people, but the common heritage of man- 
kind. Better that these materials of sacred song should for 
the most part be left by inspired men in their native simplicity, 
to be used, according to the free, transfusive, and world-em- 
bracing spirit of the Gospel, by the people of every age and 
clime, and like the flower-seeds of nature, expanded into mani- 
fold and ever-varying forms of beauty. Such indeed has been 
the result. The Gospel age has been a new era for poetry as 
well as history. The really sovereign songs of modem times 
are those wliich have drawn their inspiration from the ^ew 
Testament ; although we may still indulge the hope to which 
expression has been given by one who had a right to speak on 
such a theme, (the late Professor Wilson,) that " the time will 
come when Christian poetry will be deeper and higher far than 
any that has ever yet been known among men, and that as the 
dayspring from on high which has visited us spreads wider and 
wider over the earth, the soul of the world dreaming of things 
to come, shall assuredly see more glorified visions than have 
yet been submitted to her ken." 

Thus all is foimd to be in its proper place ; and here too, as 
was meet, the Isew Testament Scriptures bear on them the 
stamp of relative perfection. In them living realities take the 
place of prophetic visions ; and vivid exhibitions of heavenly 
things at once supplant and transcend the former poetical ele- 
vation. As Christ was in himself unspeakably greater than 
Moses, so by him came such full revelations of grace and truth 
that he needed not, like the ancient lawgiver, to compensate 
for any imperfection in his direct teaching by the stirring notes 
of a prophetico-poetical song ; and not in ecstatic visions, which 
vailed as much as disclosed the truth, but in greatest plainness 



THE PKOPHETIC STYLE AKD DICTIOISr. 145 

of Speech, his apostles laid open to the Church the mysteries of 
the kingdom. One book alone was given in vision, and writ- 
ten in the obscurer characters of prophetic symbol ; fulfilling 
I by its very existence the double purpose of being a witness to 
the Church of her still imperfect and militant condition, and a 
pledge of the brighter and better future that is preparing to 
complete her destiny. 



SECTION" ly. 

Second Peculiarity of the Prophetic Style and Diction : 
Figurative Representation. 

A certain freedom and fertility in the employment of figu- 
rative representations is an undoubted characteristic of the pro- 
phetical writings. But the ground of this peculiarity, instead 
of being traced to its source in the mode of prophetic revela- 
tion, is too often ascribed to merely partial and secondary 
influences. With many it has seemed enough to say that the 
persons through whom the word of prophecy came were Asiat- 
ics, and so naturally adopted the rich and gorgeous style which 
is agreeable to an eastern imagination, forgetting that the same 
book, which in some parts is so remarkably distinguished by 
its use of figure, is in others not less distinguished by its severe 
simplicity and directness. The explanation of Warburton and 
his follower Hurd, cannot be pronounced much more success- 
ful. These writers carry us back to the original imperfection 
of human language. They tell us of its comparatively small 
stock of words, which obliged men to resort, by way of 
compensation, to external signs and representative actions; 
descant upon its prevailing tendency, from tlie want of cultiva- 
tion and refinement, to make use of material images, which 
again was greatly strengthened and long perpetuated by tlie 
practice first of picture-writing, then of symbolic charactei*s 
formed into a regular system of representative signs and known 
by the napae of hieroglyphics. This higlily ornamental or hiero- 
glyphic style of thought and expression, we are told, sprung 

up in Egypt, and from that as its center gradually difiused 

10 



14:6 THE PROPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION". 

itself througlioiit the East ; so that it became with the Israel- 
ites, as well as the oriental nations generally, the common and 
approved garb in which they clothed their ideas, at least in 
their more formal and labored compositions. "What then 
could be more natural," asks Hurd, " than that a mode of ex- 
pression which was so well known, so commonly practiced, and 
so much revered ; which was employed in the theology of the 
eastern world, in its poetry, its philosophy, and all the sublimer 
forms of composition, should be that in which the sacred writ- 
ers conveyed their highest and most important revelations to 
mankind? If we consider how ancient, how general, how 
widely diffused this symbolic style has been and still is in the 
world ; how necessary it is to rude nations, and how taking to 
the most refined ; how large a proportion of the globe this prac- 
tice had overrun before and at the time of writing the proph- 
ecies ; and what vast regions of the east and south not yet pro- 
fessing the faith, but hereafter, as we presume, to be enlightened 
by it, the same practice at this day overspreads ; when we con- 
sider all this we shall cease, perhaps, to admire that the style 
in question was adopted rather than any other." * 

There had been no need for this apologetic strain, or the 
reference on which it is based, to the original imperfection of 
language, if due regard had been paid to the distinctive nature 
of the mode of revelation by which prophecy usually came. 
Nor does it fairly meet the point at issue. It draws no line of 
demarkation between the different kinds of composition in 
Scripture ; and if well founded, as applied to the prophetical, 
should have been scarcely less so in regard to the historical and 
didactic portions of the Bible. Seeking to account for the 
peculiarity under consideration in the common characteristics 
of human thought and speech, it obviously establishes nothing 
for one species of writing any more than for another, and con- 
sequently leaves the specific point of the prevailing use of figure 
in prophecy without any adequate explanation. The whole 
that can justly be attributed to the circumstances above noticed 

* "Hurd on the Prophecies," ser. ix; also Warburton's "Legation of Moses," 
Book iv, sec. 4. The same track is still occasionally followed ; among others, by 
Dr. Turner, in lii« recently published "Discourses on Prophecy," pp. 103-5. 



THE PROPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION. 147 

is, tliat a certain subsidiary influence may have been exerted 
by tbem, and that in such kinds of composition as properly ad- 
mitted of the use of figure, the associations and habits of the 
time may have afforded greater license for its employment than 
could otherwise have been taken. 

The fundamental reason, however, of the figurative style, 
which is so prominent a characteristic of prophecy, must be 
sought in the mode of revelation by vision. In the higher 
species of prophecy, which was connected with no ecstatic ele- 
vation on the part of the writer, but with his ordinary frame 
of mind ; that, namely, of which the most eminent examples 
are to be found in Moses and Christ ; the language employed 
does not in general differ from the style of ordinary discourse. 
But prophecy in the more special and peculiar sense, having 
been not only framed on purpose to vail while it announced 
the future, but also communicated in vision to the prophets, 
must have largely consisted of figurative representations ; for 
as in vision it is the imaginative faculty that is more immedi- 
ately called into play, images were necessary to make on it the 
fitting impressions, and these impressions could only be con- 
veyed to others by means of figurative representations. Hence 
the two, prophetical visions and figurative representations, 
are coupled together by the prophet Hosea as the proper cor- 
relatives of each other : " I have also spoken by the prophets, 
and I have multiplied visions and used similitudes by the min- 
istry of the prophets." Chap, xii, 10. 

Thus the predominant form of prophetic revelations was 
conditioned by the mode in which they were wont to be com- 
municated. That they were received by the propliet in vision 
bespoke the sensuous character of the representations made to 
him, and the prevailing use in them of images and figures. 
Yet this did not take place always in the same manner, or to 
the same extent. In accordance with the diversified circum- 
stances in which prophecy was given, and its skillful adaptation 
to the present or prospective condition of the Church, the fig- 
urative element might be greater at one period and less at 
another ; and hence, indeed, the tendency formerly noticed in 
certain prophecies to approximate to the style of hi&tory. But 



148 THE PEOPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION. 

there could never be more than an approximation in this direc- 
tion so long as prophecy came by vision. Otherwise, vision 
and reality should have lost their distinctive places, and vio- 
lence must have been done to the mind of the prophet when 
being made the subject and channel of divine communications. 
If the process was conducted intelligently and rationally, there 
must always have been something of imagery presented to the 
imagination. And even in the kind of imagery selected, it is 
but reasonable to infer that the same respect would be had to 
the ordinary laws of human thought, and that the images 
would be found in objects of the past or present, familiar to 
the individual ; since thus alone could they either have pre- 
sented themselves in a natural manner to the prophet's imagin- 
ation, or have been adapted to the apprehension of those for 
whom more immediately the revelations were imparted. It 
is only by things known, however relatively imperfect, that the 
mind can picture to itself such as are unknown ; and in fore- 
shadowing things that are yet to be, it must avail itself of those 
which have already been. In any other way to have conveyed 
to the prophets an insight into the coming issues of Providence, 
would have required not a supernatural working merely upon 
the human faculties, but the superaddition to them of a new 
sensCy or the coercion of an irrational force.* 

1. l^OTv this natural, and as it may fitly be called, necessary 
tendency in prophetical men to resort to known and familiar 
things for figurative representations of what was to come, took 

* The mental law here spoken of, having respect to the operations of mind gen- 
erally, holds equally in the philosophical as in the rehgious province. Hence it is 
laid down as a fundamental principle in the Novum Organum of Bacon, Axiom 34, 
Book i : ^ Nor is it an easy matter to deliver and explain our sentiments, for those 
things which are in themselves new can yet he only understood from some analogy 
to what is old." In other words, when attempting to conceive things not yet per- 
ceived or known, the muid necessarily shapes its conceptions by the forms of which 
it is cognizant in the present or the past. As a principle to be taken into account 
in the interpretation of prophecy, it was most distinctly enunciated by one who 
failed egregiously in the proper application of it : " The prophets were taught the 
future by means of emblems, as a blind man is taught arithmetic by means of count- 
ers. They never speak in the spiritual mood, because they never saw in that 
mood. Everything which the Spirit manifests to them was by these emblems, and 
is expressed in these the great historical events and epochs of their nation." — Irv- 
ing' s Preface to Ben Ezra, page 193. 



THE PROPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION. 149 

a twofold direction ; it led them to draw chiefly from two 
sources. The first comprehends the various objects belonging 
to the world of nature. Of these objects themselves it is not 
necessary to treat at much length ; for that they vf ere fre- 
quently used as images of things bearing some resemblance to 
them in the history of God's kingdom among men has never 
been disputed, nor is the use generally such as to give rise to 
much diversity of opinion respecting it. In the great majority 
of cases where any difference exists, it turns less upon the im- 
port of the images themselves than upon the specific application 
to be made of the sense expressed by them in the passages where 
they occur. ITo competent interpreter will doubt, that on the 
ground of a certain analogy between the symbols and the 
things symbolized, the metals in ^Nebuchadnezzar's vision, and 
the wild beasts in Daniel's, (chaps, ii, vii, viii,) denoted certain 
ruling powers and kingdoms. As little will he doubt that both 
in the prophecies of Old Testament Scripture, and in the book 
of Revelation, mountains are a common designation for worldly 
kingdoms, stars for ruling powers, roaring and troubled seas 
for tumultuous nations, trees for the higher as grass for the 
lower grades of society, running streams for the means of life 
and refreshment, the bow in the cloud for the return of mercy 
and loving-kindness after floods of judgment; and many more 
of a like kind. The spiritual import of such symbols is gen- 
erally rendered plain enough by the connection in which they 
stand, and a comparison of one passage with another. Nor are 
there wanting works which give, in a compendious and accessi- 
ble form, a particular explanation of the symbols in the pro- 
phetic imagery derived from natural objects, and which may 
be referred to by those who wish to study the subject in detail,* 
We refrain, therefore, from entering into minute investigations 
regarding it ; but there are two points to which we must par- 
ticularly advert, as they form the fundamental conditions on 

* Two of the latest in this country are Wemyss's " Clavis Symbolica/' and " Mills's 
Sacred Symbology," both useful works, and for the most part agreeing in their ex- 
planation of the symbols, but occasionally differing from each other, and- (as we 
believe) from the correct view itself, in the application and use made of particular 
images. 



160 THE PROPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION". 

wMcli the use of natural symbols in prophecy is founded, and 
must, therefore, be kept steadily in view by all who would suc- 
ceed in the interpretation of the prophetical Scriptures. 

(1.) The first of these conditions is, that the image must be 
contemplated in its broader and commoner aspects, as it would 
naturally present itself to the view of persons generally ac- 
quainted with the works and ways of God, not as connected 
with any smaller incidents or recondite uses, known only to 
the few. The reason of this is obvious. For if symbolical 
language is to convey any definite or certain meaning, it must 
proceed on a consideration of the objects employed as symbols, 
such as is commonly known and understood ; and to depart 
from this common ground, and make account of things entirely 
incidental and peculiar, could only give occasion to subtleties 
and refinements, which must render certainty unattainable. 
Even analogies, which might readily enough have presented 
themselves to people in certain times or circumstances, but 
belonging rather to the profane than to the sacred territory, 
must here be left out of view ; for they necessarily want those 
characteristics which fit them for serving as the elements of a 
biblical symbolical language, such as might be distinctly ap- 
prehended, and generally acquiesced in. Let us take as an 
example the warlike attire of the first rider in the Apocalypse, 
(chapter vi, 2,) who is described as appearing with a bow, and 
going forth conquering and to conquer. From the frequent 
use of the bow in ancient war, its early consecration in poetry 
and the arts, as a common accompaniment or emblem of mar- 
tial skill and prowess, and more particularly from its use in 
Psalm xlv, in connection with that glorious King who, in the 
cause of truth and righteousness, was to ride forth prosperously, 
sending his arrows into the hearts of his enemies, and bringing 
the people under him : from such considerations, which are 
obvious and patent to all, one can easily understand how ap- 
propriately the bow might be selected in a book of symbols as 
the distinctive badge of a hero, or of the cause identified with 
the hero, whose singular destiny it was to go forth conquering 
and to conquer, whose career of conquest was only to cease 
when all power and authority had been made subject to Him. 



THE PROPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION". 151 

But tlie matter assumes another aspect ; it is withdrawn from 
the broad field of nature and of history to the obscure and 
narrow comer of antiquarian research, when, as with some 
recent writers, the key to its precise import and application is 
sought in the remote ancestry of a single individual. By this 
class of interpreters, the symbol is identified in the first instance 
with the reign of Nerva, but extended also to that of his four 
immediate successors, on the special ground that I^erva him- 
self, who stands at the head of the group, though his family 
had been long domesticated in Italy, yet was by descent con- 
nected with Crete, his great-great-great-grandfather having 
been born there ; and in Crete, the bow was used as a sort of 
national emblem ! As if the readiest thought about a public 
man, and the mark by which he might be most aptly charac- 
terized, yea, and with him a line of successors, who in this pre- 
cise point differed from their head, was the relation in which 
he happened to stand, through the ascending links of several 
generations, to a comparatively unimportant island. With a 
license to ransack antiquity for such incidents to determine the 
meaning and application of prophetic symbols, who should be 
able to foretell what may one day be extracted from them ? 
Or who could assure himself that he had really ascertained 
their import ? But, indeed, such modes of explanation may be 
left to themselves ; and when the principles of prophetical in- 
terpretation are better understood, they will be seen to carry 
their own refutation along with them. 

(2.) The other condition with which the use and interpreta- 
tion of prophetic symbols must be associated, is that of a con- 
sistent and uniform manner of applying them ; not shifting 
from the symbolical to the literal without any apparent indi- 
cation of a change in the original, or from one aspect of the 
symbolical to another essentially different, but adhering to a 
regular and harmonious treatment of the objects introduced 
into the representation. This also is necessary ; for without 
such a consistence and regularity in the employment of sym- 
bols, there could be no certainty in the interpretations put upon 
them ; all would become arbitrary and doubtful. Thus, if in 
the second chapter of Isaiah, the mountain of the Lord's house 



152 THE PROPHETIC STYLE AXD DICTION". 

is to be understood in a moral sense, understood symbolically 
of the seat of the divine kingdom,"^ then the other mountains 
mentioned in connection with it, over which it was to be ex- 
alted, must also be understood of kingdoms, the rival powers 
and monarcliies of the world. So in the sixty -third chapter of 
the same prophet, if the Edom there mentioned, on whom the 
Lord's vengeance is exercised, is the " country spiritually called 
Edom," really some modern hostile power, the people in whose 
behalf the work is done must also be those spiritually called 
Israel : the true Church. Or, take an image that occurs with 
great frequency in the prophetic Scriptures ; that, namely, of 
falling used in reference to a person or a kingdom, and denot- 
ing when so used, the destruction of a power or the overthrow 
of a dominion ; as, when the proclamation is heard, " Babylon 
is fallen." There can be no doubt that such is the import of 
the expression in ancient prophecy, and also in the eighteenth 
chapter of Kevelation, where the subject of discourse is the 
complete overthrow of the power there designated by the name 
of Babylon. But the same sense should manifestly be retained 
in other passages of the book ; at chapter xi, 13, for example, 
where, speaking of the same power under the image of a city, 
it is said, that on the occasion of a mighty earthquake the tenth 
part of the city fell. Whatever may be there intended by the 
tenth part of the city, consistency in the use of terms requires 
that the falling should denote an overthrow ; and so understood, 
the idea conveyed by it cannot well accord with that, which is 
so commonly found in the passage, of the detachment of certain 
modern kingdoms from the Romish apostasy by the reception 
of the Protestant faith. Xor does the description in other re- 
spects appear to suit this interpretation ; for it is immediately 
added, " seven thousand were slain in the earthquake, and the 
remnant (those, namely, who remained in the city) were 
affrighted, and gave glory to the God of heaven." So that 
neither does the liind of falling implied in this interpretation 
agree with that actually conveyed by the expression, (the event 
supposed, indeed, might more properly be termed a rising than 
a falling, as regards the particular kingdom,) nor did the other 

* See Part I, chap. iii. 



THE PROPHETIC STYLE AKD DICTION. 153 

results connected with it at all correspond in nature and mag- 
nitude to those unfolded in the apocalyptic vision. 

Many similar violations of the very simple and necessary 
condition we have specified might be selected from some of 
the more popular and current works on the Apocalypse. In 
particular, they often err by confounding together symbol and 
reality. Thus, while Babylon is uniformly understood, in the 
mystical sense, of the Papal system, with its center of power 
and influence at Rome, the Euphrates, (chap, ix, 14,) the river 
on which it should stand, if the image is consistently employed, 
is taken as the actual Assyrian river, or (if viewed symbol- 
ically) as the designation, not of a Romish but of a Moham- 
medan power, having its seat where the literal Euphrates 
flows. In like manner, the burning mountain of the second 
trumpet is viewed as symbolizing Genseric the Yandal ; but 
the sea into which that mountain is cast is supposed to be not 
the symbol of something else, but the veritable sea of the 
Roman empire in its coasts and harbors. So, again, Attila is 
regarded as the scourge that corresponds to the burning star of 
the third trumpet, while the fountains and rivers it falls upon 
are held to be, not what resemble the objects denoted by these 
terms, but the objects themselves : the Danube, the Rhine, and 
the Po, with the countries to which they belong. We are not 
to be understood as indicating any opinion as to whether the 
historical events now referred to were contemplated in the 
visions with which they have thus been associated, but are 
merely indicating what seems an obvious flaw in such a mode 
of interpretation. It is impossible that the symbolical repre- 
sentations of Scripture can be written in so confused and arbi- 
trary a style ; and if those were in reality the events in which 
the prophetic visions found their accomplishment, it will assur- 
edly be practicable to establish the connection between the 
prophecy and its fulfillment without so palpably travestying 
the ordinary laws of language. 

It belongs also to the same fundamental condition, as to the 
ure of figurative representations in prophecy, that the figura- 
tive character of the description in its general features, not less 
than in the particular images it employs, should be preserved 



154: THE PEOPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION". 

tlirougliout. The examples of false interpretation just noticed 
refer to particular images, and show the uncertainty and con- 
fusion that inevitably arise, when they are dealt with in an 
arbitrary and variable manner. But there ought to be the like 
consistence and uniformity observed in respect also to the gen- 
eral features of a prophetical delineation ; since we cannot sup- 
pose that the vision shifted from a symbolical or ideal descrip- 
tion in one part to a plain matter-of-fact description in another. 
"We might, indeed, expect occasional notes and indications de- 
rived from the actual world as prospectively contemplated by 
the prophet, rather than from the ideal world in which he was 
for the time living, furnishing a kind of key for the more cer- 
tain explanation of the figurative delineation, and giving some 
indication of the more prominent acts in the historical drama 
to which it pointed. This, we say, might not unnaturally be 
expected ; for such ideal delineations in prophecy, viewed in 
respect to the things they represented, must always have been 
of a somewhat enigmatical nature. They necessarily to some 
extent vailed, while they exhibited the coming reality ; and so 
required, in part, to borrow from the reality to prevent the vail 
from altogether hiding its proper character. Such manifestly 
is the case in the description given by Joel (chaps, i and ii) of 
the threatened judgment of God under the image of locusts in- 
vading the land, and spreading terror and desolation through 
all its borders. In several parts of the description traits are 
introduced which appear so strange and exaggerated, if under- 
stood merely of the natural plague of locusts, that we cannot 
but regard them as designed, like so many rays of light let in 
from the actual world, to render the vail transparent, and dis- 
cover the much more fearful reality which it imaged : namely, 
the desolation to be produced by the Chaldean army. Of this 
sort in particular are the statements made respecting the un- 
paralleled greatness of the calamity to be produced by the 
locust-army ; its coming was to be emphatically the day of the 
Lord, and in itself an evil of unheard-of magnitude, (chap, i, 
2, 3, 15 ;) so also what is said of the effects .of the visitation, 
which are described as nothing less than the loss of all the out- 
ward signs of a covenant relationship to God, (verses 8 and 9 ;) 



THE PKOPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION. 165 

then, again, the designation of the instruments of vengeance aa 
a nation, (verse 6,) and their subsequent identification with the 
mighty conqueror from the north, (chap, ii, 20 ;) nay, with the 
heathen generally, deliverance from whose oppressive and 
ignominious yoke is represented as all one with preservation 
from the threatened calamity, (verse 17.) Such things are un- 
doubtedly to be regarded as realistic features, introduced on pur- 
pose to show that the description was an ideal one, and should 
be understood throughout only as intended to present an im- 
perfect image of the transactions really predicted. Similar 
things are to be found in other parts of the prophetic writings ; 
for example, in the description of Ezekiel's temple and its 
accompaniments, which in like manner serve to break the 
shell of the ideal covering, and render manifest the proper 
greatness of the reality that lies beneath.* 

So far, we admit, it was probable, and in a sense necessary, 
that the realistic should intermingle with the ideal, or the 
actual with the symbolical in prophetical delineations. But it 
was still within very narrow limits, that this either was or 
could be done; so far only as might be required to give some 
idea of the kind of realization that was to be expected, or the 
manner in which it was to be brought about. In the general, 
however, the description must be uniform ; it could not other- 
wise be intelhgible ; and if constructed on a figurative basis, one 
and the same character must be sustained throughout. For 
example, the vision which Isaiah is reported to have seen re- 
specting Babylon, and which forms the most imaginative and 
picturesque delineation in his whole writings, (chaps, xiii and 
xiv ;) a delineation which condenses into one vivid picture the 
history of ages, and draws together all that can be conceived 
most terrible and afiecting of things in heaven, things on earth, 
and even things under the earth to portray the doomed and 
prostrate condition of the self-exalting, God-dishonoring king- 
dom : in the whole of this pictorial representation there is to 

* In the case of Ezekiel's temple, the vast dimensions of the temple and city 
may be referred to in proof, the alterations at several points introduced into the 
Old Testament ritual, and the kind of river represented as flowing from the temple 
to the Dead Sea. 



156 THE PROPHETIC STYLE AND DICTIOIT. 

be sought, according to its predominant character, not the 
exact and literal description of the futui'e, bnt rather such an 
ideal picture as might present the most distinct and lively 
image of its nature. This is so plain as to admit of no doubt 
in regard to certain parts of the representation : those which 
speak of the sun being darkened, and the stars of heaven ceas- 
ing to give their*light ; of the fir-trees rejoicing, and the cedars 
of Lebanon lifting up their voice ; of the humbled monarch him- 
self descending into the shades of the mighty dead, and being 
there greeted with taunts from those over whom he was wont 
to domineer, as now brought down to a level with themselves. 
Every one perceives that in all this there is merely an ideal or 
figurative representation of the awful reverse, the utterly re- 
mediless desolation and ruin which awaited Babylon as a king- 
dom. And why should not the same view be taken of the 
other parts ? It is one end that is aimed at throughout, and 
the means employed to reach it could with no propriety be 
diverse in their character. Even the mention of the Medes, in 
connection with the coming vengeance, (chap, xiii, IT,) can only 
be regarded as a historical trait introduced for the pm'pose for- 
merly stated ; to mark more definitely the nature of the events 
predicted, together with the nearness and certainty of the 
change they were to bring. And what is said in the remain- 
ing details of the shepherds making their folds there, and of 
wild beasts of the desert, owls and dragons, and all kinds of 
doleful creatures, making it their haunt, was necessary (like 
the monarch's ideal descent into the nether world, and hearing 
the shout of triumph raised over his downfall) to complete the 
picture of thorough desolation, and exhibit Babylon as an ut- 
terly extinct empire. This was the real object of the repre 
sentation; and the actual appearance of some of the things 
specified in the condition of Babylon as a mere city or prov- 
ince, served but to exhibit how the doom of Babylon as an em- 
pire — ^the only doom properly announced in the prophecy — 
had already passed into accomplishment. In the execution of 
this doom the prediction was verified ; and the signs of local 
wretchedness and desolation, which in process of time settled 
upon the very city and neighborhood, less properly fulfilled 



THE PROPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION". 167 

.what was spoken than sealed the fulfillment, and rendered it 
palpable to the most careless observer. 

(3.) But besides this sustained and pervading ideality in many 
of the figurative delineations of prophecy, which are drawn 
from natural objects, there is another element to be taken into 
account ; not always, indeed, as an indispensable condition on 
which they proceed, yet still as a very common characteristic, 
giving a distinctive form and color to the representation. We 
allude to the prophet's subjective state and position, while the 
objects in the divine vision were passing before his illuminated 
eye. If the prophet simply described what he saw as a calm 
observer, the subjective element would, of course, be kept in 
abeyance. But this was not usually the case. More com- 
monly his personal feelings were called into exercise, and were 
allowed to give their tone and impress to the description. 
Hence the perceptible differences in manner among the pro- 
phetical writers, who even in narrating what occurred in vision, 
retain severally their individual characteristics of thought and 
expression. Hence, also, the apparently exaggerated descrip- 
tions which are sometimes given of the changes predicted to 
take place in the world ; as in the vision of Isaiah respecting 
Babylon just referred to, when he says, " The stars of heaven 
and the constellations thereof do not give their light, the sun 
is darkened in his going forth, and the moon does not cause 
her light to shine." Or in what Jeremiah saw when he was 
assured of the approaching dissolution of the Jewish state, " I 
beheld the earth, and lo ! it was without form and void: and 
the heavens, and they had no light. I beheld the mountains, 
and all the hills moved lightly, (chap, iv, 23, 24.) Or agaui, 
in Joel's memorable description of the wonders that were to 
appear in the latter days, according to which the sun was to be 
turned into darkness and the moon into blood before the great 
and terrible day of the Lord, (chap, ii, 30, 31.) Such passages 
in the prophetical writings are not to be regarded simply as 
high-wrought descriptions in the peculiar style of oriental 
poetry, possessing but a slender foundation of nature to rest 
upon. On the contrary, they have their con'espondence in the 
literature of all nations, and their justification in the natural 



158 THE PROPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION. 

workings of tlie human mind ; we mean its workings wlien 
under circumstances which, tend to bring the faculty of imag- 
ination into vigorous play, much as it was acted on with the 
prophets when in ecstasy they received divine revelations. For 
it is the characteristic of this faculty when possessed in great 
strength, and operated upon by stirring events, such as mighty 
revolutions and distressing calamities, that it fuses every object 
by its intense radiation and brings them into harmony with its 
own prevailing passion or feeling. It leads the person who is 
under its sway to regard himself as the center of all that is pro- 
ceeding around him, even to see " the history of his own most 
secret emotions written on the very rocks." So that if work 
ing in connection with a bosom greatly troubled and agitated, 
it will transfer that trouble and agitation to the objects which 
it happens for the time to be contemplating. Such precisely 
is the exhibition ; an exhibitien not to be apologized for, but 
justly reckoned among the finest creations of Shakspeare'a 
genius ; given of the workings of Macbeth's mind when on 
the eve of perpetrating the horrid murder."^ " Standing on the 
very brink of hell, and about to plunge into it, he sees the re- 
flection . of his own chaotic feelings in all things. Order is 
turned into disorder ; law is suspended ; every natural, every 
social tie is cracking ; he is hurling an innocent man, his king, 
his guest, into the jaws of death ; death is in all his thoughts. 
To him, therefore, vdth the deepest truth, ' o'er the one half 
world nature seems dead ; ' even as also the instrument with 
which the crime was to be perpetrated rises in palpable 
form before him, though it was *only a dagger of the 

* The words of Macbeth, more particularly referred to, are the following: 

" Is this a dagger which I see before me, 

The handle toward my hand ? Come, let me clutcli thee : 

I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. 

Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible 

To feeling, as to sight 1 Or art thoii but 

A dagger of the mind : a false creation, 

Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain ? 

* * * There's no such thing : 

It is the bloody business which informs 

Thus to mine eyes. Now o'er the one half world 

Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse 

The curtained sleeper," etc. 



THE PROPHETIC STYLE AND DICTIOK. 159 

mind, a false creation, proceeding from the heat-oppressed 
brain.' " * 

E^or are such things to be met with in poetry alone ; they 
are not wanting even in prose compositions, when the subject 
is of a kind fitted to work powerfully on the imagination, and 
agitate the bosom. The mind then cannot refrain in its histor- 
ical delineations of what is taking place, from throwing around 
the world of outward realities the aspect of its own inward ex- 
perience ; as (to refer to a familiar example) in the descriptions 
given by cotemporary writers of the fearful irruptions of the 
northern barbarians into the south of Europe, which they were 
wont to characterize as torrents, conflagrations, and even earth- 
quakes. " Such," says Guizot, when speaking of these descrip- 
tions, " is the instinctive poetry of the human mind, that it re- 
ceives from facts an impression which is [often] livelier and 
greater than are the facts themselves ; they are for it but mat- 
ter, which it fashions and forms, a theme upon which it exer- 
cises itself, and over which it spreads beauties and effects which 
were not really there." And on this ground, combined with 
the excitation naturally produced by a sense of personal inter- 
est in the events described, he justly infers that in the .light of 
history the accounts referred to must be understood with some 
qualification ; they must be considered as to a certain extent 
pictures of the imagination, though raised, doubtless, on a 
dreadful substratum of historical reality. f ]^eed we wonder, 
then, that the prophets, when depicting scenes of uproar and 
convulsion, should often have done so in language that reflected 
the agitation or distress experienced in their own bosoms? 
Being descriptions of what was seen in vision, they are pictures 
of the imagination ; they are ideal scenes, though scenes which 
appeared real to the prophet who lived in them, and which in 
due time also, as regards the substance of the delineation, were 
to hecome real in the historical future. What, therefore, is 
actually meant by the constellations of heaven disappearing, or 
by the sun being turned into darkness and the moon into 
blood, is that everything would appear to men's view in a con- 

* "Guesses at Truth," i, p. 63. 

f "History of Civilization in France," sec. viiL 



160 THE PROPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION. 

vulsed state ; such terror should everywhere strike their minds 
as would make all things in nature seem to be out of course, 
and the very instruments of life and blessing would wear the 
aspect of messengers of wrath. This is the case to some extent 
in every manifestation of the Lord for judgment ; but not till 
his appearance for what shall be emphatically the world's judg- 
ment shall it rise to its proper consummation. 

2. As yet we have noticed only one of the sources from 
which the prophets drew the materials of their figurative rep- 
resentations of the future : namely, the visible world of natm'e. 
But there was another, and one more frequently resorted to in 
those prophecies, which bore respect to the person and king- 
dom of Messiah ; one, therefore, that we have more especially 
to do with, when considering the word of prophecy with refer- 
ence to Christian times. This other and very fertile source of 
prophetic imagery consisted of the things which belonged to 
the history of God'^s dealings with his Church and 'people / the 
tilings, as they are very commonly called, of the Old Covenant, 
though including also what pertained to earlier times. The 
higher and better things to come, which it was the calling of 
the prophets to announce beforehand, were to be but the fuller 
development of those which existed in the past, or a grander 
exemplification of the truths and principles they embodied. 
The two stood related to each other, partly as the beginning 
to the end, partly, also, as the shell to the kernel ; and in a 
doctrinal respect alone it was of great importance to have this 
relative connection and dependence maintained ; so to exhibit 
and foretell the better future, as not to lose sight of its organic 
union and fundamental correspondence with the past. This, 
of itself, must have led to the various use of the former things 
which lay within the ken of the prophets and those whom they 
immediately addressed, as a fitting medium through which to 
point men's hopes and expectations toward what was to be 
hereafter. And not only so, but as God when revealing him- 
self in vision to the prophets did not work magically^ though 
he wrought supernaturally upon their minds ; as in all that they 
saw and felt there was the free and conscious exercise of their 
mental faculties ; and finally, as it is only from things known, 



THE PROPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION. 161 

existing in the present or past, that the mind can imagine to 
itself, or describe intelligibly to others the things which are 
still unknown and future : on these grounds it was a matter of 
necessity that the materials of what the prophets uttered re- 
specting the appearance and kingdom of Messiah should be 
drawn chiefly from the affairs of past and preparatory dispen- 
sations. It was only by the help of the lower and ascertained 
class of objects and relations that they could attain to any defi- 
nite idea of the higher things in prospect ; even as still it is 
only from Grod having let himself down to the sphere of 
humanity, having clothed himself in human form, acted under 
the impulse of human affections, and spoken of himself and 
heavenly things in modes of speech derived from the familiar 
objects of sense and time, that we can rise to the apprehension 
of what is really spiritual and divine. And as in these latter, 
so beyond doubt in the other, the prophetical representations, 
there must be a large intermixture of the figurative. What 
they presented could not be the very image or naked reality of 
the things in prospect, but only such a view of them as could 
be given through imperfect forms, and by means of partial and 
glimpse-like visions ; so that in them the dim shadow of the 
past ever as it were projected itself into the future, and spread 
like a vail or mask over the prospect that lay before. 

The necessity we here speak of was one that arose from the 
very position of the prophets, and the mode in which an insight 
was granted them into a future which, in many respectsj was 
higher and greater than anything that had hitherto appeared ; 
a future which one of the most distinguished of those prophets 
announced would be such as " the world had not heard, nor 
perceived by the. ear, neither had the eye seen." Before Isaiah 
and the later prophets (to whom we now more particularly 
refer) came upon the stage of sacred history, several of the 
most prominent features in this grander future had been 
brought out with a considerable degree of distinctness. Plain 
and repeated intimations had already been given of a personal 
Messiali, who should come to fulfill the promises made to the 
fathers ; of the connection in which he was to stand with the 

house of David ; of his peculiar relation also to the Godhead, 

11 



162 THE PROPHETIC STYLE JlNJ) DICTIOIT. 

qualifying him for higher work than David himself could per- 
form ; and in the accomplishment of that work, of his destina- 
tion, like David, first to severe trials and deep humiliation, 
then to pre-eminent greatness and glory. Such points in the 
prophetic future had been rendered familiar to men's thoughts 
and expectations even before the commonwealth of Israel took 
the downward course, which began with the division into two 
kingdoms. But for the filling up of the prospect by more spe- 
cial predictions for the investing of those primary and essen- 
tial features with the properties of flesh and blood ; in short, 
for the delineation of the Messianic future in its more distinct- 
ive characteristics and varied results, everything had yet to be 
done by Isaiah and the prophets of a later period. ]!^or, ac- 
cording to the fixed laws of human thought, could it have been 
done otherwise than under the form and aspect of things pre- 
viously existing; for if revealed in another and more direct 
manner, the distinction must have been practically abolished 
between vision and reality ; and the prophets, whose part it 
was only to descry and herald from afar the better things to 
come, would, contrary to the progressive character of the divine 
plan, Ihave been placed on a footing as to light and privilege 
with Christ and the apostles, by whom the better things them- 
selves were introduced. There had been no room in the case 
supposed, tor the marked difference between the revelations of 
the old and the new dispensations : nor could it have been said 
of tlie one period as compared with the other, " The darkness 
is past, and the true light now shineth." 

In this, no doubt, it is implied that the revelations by proph- 
ecy, respecting the gospel age and its realities, were necessarily 
•defective as to clearness and precision, and are not capable of 
bearing so exact an interpretation, or yielding so explicit a 
meaning in respect to the affairs of Christ's kingdom as is con- 
veyed by the writings of the IS'ew Testament. But such, pre- 
cisely, is the result that was to be expected from the place and 
calling of the Old Testament prophets. Though high in one 
respect they were subordinate in another. Indeed, they were 
subordinate in reference to the past as well as to the future ; 
subordinate even to Moses, so that they could not alter in any 



THE PROPHETIC STYLE AKD DICTIO:?^. 163 

particular tlie polity introduced by him ; and tlie primary and 
most fundamental test of their divine commission was tlie con- 
formity of their teaching to that of .the lawgiver. Tlie whole 
they could do in the way of advance was to hold out the pros- 
pect and kindle the desire of another and better state of things. 
But if inferior to Moses as regards the revelation of the mys- 
teries of God's kingdom, how much more in comparison of 
Christ ? Even John the Baptist was more than a prophet, be- 
cause he stood within the actual dawn of Christ's day ; and yet 
such was the brightness which characterized this day, that John 
himself was less than the least of those who fully shared in its 
privileges, (Matt, xi, 11.) ISTor was this the case merely in the 
general, but on specific points also it is expressly asserted that 
the revelations of Old Testament prophecy were much inferior 
in distinctness to those brought by the embassadors of Christ. 
Thus the Apostle Paul, when discoursing of what he calls " the 
mystery of Christ," says : " It was not made known in other 
ages to the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto the holy 
apostles and prophets by the Spirit, that the Gentiles should 
be fellow-heirs, and of the same body, and partakers of his 
promise in Christ by the Gospel." Eph. iii, 6, 6. Here the 
apostles and prophets of the l!^ew Testament are placed above 
the prophets of the Old, distinctly on the ground that in the 
matter referred to they had more clear and explicit reve- 
lations given them. IS'ay, it is on these apostles and proph- 
ets of the new covenant that the entire temple of the Chris- 
tian Church is reared; not on them as apart from Christ, 
but most intimately associated with him, and by him, as his 
agents charged with the whole ordering and establishing of the 
Church in its institutions, privileges, government, and progress. 
Could such things have been said and done, if the revelations 
by the ancient prophets, respecting the work and kingdom of 
Christ, had not been dim and imperfect, as compared with the 
announcements of the Gospel ? And if those prophets received 
nothing in vision which would interfere with and unsettle what 
had been imparted to Moses, when God spake with him face 
to face, what an anomaly would it not be if their word were to 
be called in to supersede, or even to explicate and determine 



164 THE PROPHETIC STYLE AND DICTIOIS'. 

more perfectly, the word that came by Christian apostles and 
prophets ! This were truly to invert the natural order of things, 
to imagine one could find in twilight-gloom what is not to be 
perceived amid the sunshine of noon-day. There cannot be a 
surer canon of interpretation than that everything which affects 
the constitution and destiny of the New Testament Church has 
its clea/rest determination in New Testament Scripture. 

This canon, with the grounds on which it is based, strikes at 
the root of many false conclusions, drawn mainly from ancient 
prophecy, respecting the events of the latter days ; conclusions 
which always implicitly, and sometimes even avowedly, give to 
the Old the ascendancy over the IlTew ; and on the principle 
which has its. grand embodiment in Popery, would send the 
world back to the age of comparative darkness and imperfec- 
tion for the type of its normal and perfected condition.* But, 
by the positions we have been establishing in respect to the 
essential nature of Old Testament prophecy, and the mode of 
its revelations, we are carried further than this ; we are en- 
abled also to perceive the fallacy of a conception which, from 
an early period, has been prevalent in the Church, as to the 
kind of insight possessed by the ancient prophets into the reali- 
ties of the Gospel dispensation. It has been very commonly 
supposed that these were presented to them in their proper 
character, and that they saw them much as they are now seen 
amid the revelations of the Gospel. Hence the prophecies in 
which they give utterance to the knowledge they obtained ac- 
cording to a happy simile of Tholuck, came to be regarded as 
" an image of history, thrown by means of a concave mirror 
from the future into the past ; " f that is, the character and 
events of the prophetic future were supposed to be exhibited 
in a kind of reflex manner to the eye of the prophet, and 
though in less definite lines, yet exactly in the form of the his- 

* The late Mr. Irving only spoke out distinctly ou this subject what is implied in 
many current interpretations when he said, " My idea is, that not the Old Testa- 
ment, but the New Testament dispensation hath an end ; and then the other re- 
sumes its course under Christ and his bride, which is his Church." All who hold 
that there is to be a return to the old sacrificial worship must concur in this opin- 
ion, whether they give expression to it or not. 

f " Commentary on the Hebrews," Diss. i. 



THE PROPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION. 165 

torical reality. It was the same misconception wliicli prevailed 
in regard to the Old Testament types, and which, by perpetually 
stirring the question, What under this and that particular ordi- 
nance did ancient believers perceive of Christ's person or 
work ? gave a wrong direction to men's inquiries, and perpetu- 
ated the existence of an entirely fanciful and arbitrary typo- 
logical system. This error we have endeavored to expose else- 
where,'^ and tlie similar error in respect to the prophecies of 
the Old Testament admits still more readily of exposure ; it 
flows as a necessary deduction from the fundamental principles 
of the subject. For if the revelations given of Christian times 
by the prophets of the former dispensation, occupied, like the 
prophets themselves, only a subsidiary position in respect to 
Moses, and a preliminary one in respect to Christ and his 
apostles ; if on this account they disclose simply what was 
exhibited to them in vision, and heard in dream, not perceived 
amid the realities of waking life ; then there must have been a 
specific and characteristic inferiority in the nature of the pro- 
phetic, as compared with the apostolic revelations. And that 
inferiority must, according to the known laws of human 
thought, to which the Spirit ever adapts himself in his opera- 
tions, have mainly stood in the more ideal and figurative char- 
acter of the prophetic announcements. The prophets neces- 
sarily thought and spake of the future under the conditions of 
their own historical position ; so that it was not the image of 
the future which threw itself back upon the past, but rather 
the image of the past which threw itself forward into the 
future : the things which were and had been, gave their form 
to the things which were yet to be. The substance of the 
Messianic prophecies, as Tholuck has again happily said, "is 
the Psyche of the New Testament, hidden under the chrysalis 
envelopment of the Old Testament. But as the latter is still 
a Psyche even while concealed under its thick covering, so also 
the prophecies wear an envelope, which they can be divested of 
only by him who perceives their historical fulfillment. Hence 
the prophets delineate the blessings of the New Covenant in 
colors taken from the Old Testament theocracy." 

* See "'Typology of Scripture," Book I, chap. vi. 



166 THE PKOPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION. 

Now that sucli actually was the case, that the Old Testa- 
ment predictions of Gospel times did usually partake of an Old 
Testament coloring, may be made plain by a few examples 
bearing on the very heart and center of the new economy, in 
which we have the beneJSt of an inspired interpretation, and 
about which, therefore, there is no proper room for dispute. 
Such are some of the predictions which went before, respecting 
Christ's personal appearance and work ; those more especially 
which bore respect to his threefold office, and which usually 
present what he was to be and do under an Old Testament 
aspect. Thus in Isaiah Ixi, 1, the Messiah in his prophetical 
office is represented as ^'anointed to preach good tidings to 
the meek," with reference to the consecrating oil, which in the 
case of such persons as were designated to special prophetical 
service, was wont to be employed, (1 Kings xix, 16 ;) although 
not the outward form, but the spiritual reality alone, was to be 
found in Christ. In like manner as priest, he is described as 
" opening a fountain for sin and uncleanness," " anointing a 
holy of holies," "pouring out his soul unto death," (as in the 
ordinary victims, the animal soul, the life-blood,) and thereby 
" making it an offering for sin," (Zech. xiii, 1 ; Dan. ix, 24 ; 
Isa. liii, 10, 12 ;) all of them expressing Old Testament acts, 
and therefore neither having, nor capable of having, a formal, 
though they certainly had a most real fulfillment ; the words 
were accomplished ; not in the letter, which from the nature of 
things they could not be, but in spirit and in truth. So again 
as King, it was predicted of Messiah that he should spring 
forth as a stem out of the root of Jesse, a branch of the royal 
stock of David, that he should sit upon David's throne, and 
should build (in some higher sense than the returned captives 
w^ere building) the temple of the Lord, (Isa. ix, 7 ; xi, 1 ; Zech. 
vi, 12, 13, etc.) And in perfect accordance with the meaning 
of these predictions, but with httle agreement as to the out- 
ward form of things, he is represented in Gospel history as 
coming into the world to occupy the throne of his father David, 
(Luke i, 32 ;) nay, as allowing himself to be proclaimed its 
present occupant, (Mark xi, 9, 10 ; Luke xix, 38 ; Matt, xxi, 5 ;) 
and after his ascension, the apostles, in the most explicit man- 



THE PEOPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION. 167 

ner, declare him to have entered on the fulfiUment of the 
prophecies which spake of his kingly glory, openly announce 
him as having already become a Prince and a Saviour, even 
represent him as having been anointed in terms of the second 
Psalm, (Acts ii, 33, etc. ; iv, 25-27 ; v, 31 ;) and speak of him 
as thus constituted head over all things, that he might carry 
forv^ard the building of a great spiritual temple to the Lord, 
(Eph. ii, 20-22 ; 1 Pet. ii, 5, etc.) It is impossible, by any 
fair construction of the language in these cases, to understand 
it of anything but an actual and present fulfillment of the 
prophecies referred to, an occupation at that very time of the 
predicted throne, and a prosecution of the work properly be- 
longing to it ; while between the form of the predictions, and 
the manner of their accomplishment, there were as many 
formal differences as there were essential agreements. For 
those who might insist upon a literal conformity to the pattern 
of David's throne and kingdom, there could have appeared no 
fulfillment.* And indeed, whence arose all the misapprehen- 
sions of the disciples themselves about the work and kingdom 
of Christ, and the difiiculty of having them brought to a right 
understanding of the prophecies concerning him ? Did it not 
spring from the predominantly outward and shadowy form of 
the things predicted, the shell of which they were long imable 
to break and get at the kernel which lay within ? The Gospel 
history would be an inexplicable riddle if prophecy had not in 
general presented the new things of the kingdom under the 
vail of the old. 

It is much the same when we pass from the personal work of 
Christ to that which more immediately concerns its application 
and fruits among men, the work of the Spirit. Of this, beyond 
doubt, the prophet Ezekiel speaks, when he makes promise of 
a sprinkling with clean water, (chap, xxxvi, 25,) in language 
derived from the corporeal lustrations of the old covenant ; 
and the fulfillment alike of the prophetic word and of the legal 
type is indicated in those passages of the New Testament 
which describes believers as " washed," as " clean," or even as 

* For a raore particular examination of the prophecies respecting Christ's occu- 
pation of the throne of David, see Part II, cliap. ii. 



168 THE PROPHETIC STYLE AND DICTIOI>r. 

having "their bodies washed with pure water," though what 
was really meant is the purifying of their consciences from the 
guilt and pollution of sin. But one of the most striking exam- 
ples of this species of prophecy and its fulfillment, connected 
with the work of the Spirit, is to he found at the Very com- 
mencement of the Spirit's dispensation. On the day of Pente- 
cost, the Apostle Peter, accounting for what was at the time 
proceeding, said, " This is that which was spoken by the 
prophet Joel : And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith 
God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh ; and your sons 
and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall 
see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams ; and on my 
servants and on my handmaidens I will pour in those days of 
my Spirit, and they shall prophesy," etc. It were against all 
probability to suppose that the apostle meant to speak of this 
prophecy as having found a complete fulfillment in the events 
of that particular day, or as being in any measure exhausted by 
these. But beyond all question, he does claim for it an actual 
fiilfillment in the larger spiritual endowments then granted to 
the apostles, and their speaking in a supernatural manner of 
the things of salvation. This must, in the apostle's estimation, 
have answered to the prediction of Joel respecting the outpour- 
ing of the Spirit, and the results in which it was to appear ; 
for there precisely lay the occasion for citing the prophecy and 
the point on which its testimony was needed. Yet here, also, 
the form in the two cases materially differs ; it is old in the one 
and new in the other. The prophecy, viewed in respect to its 
substance, makes promise of a far freer and larger communica- 
tion of the Spirit than had hitherto been known ; but it does 
this under the peculiar form of a quite general seeing of visions 
and hearing of dreams, because such, when Joel lived, was the 
mode in which the more special gifts of the Spirit manifested 
themselves. In that manner alone could he conceive of so 
plentiful a communication of the Spirit taking place. But by 
the time the prophecy entered on its proper fulfillment, this 
form of the Spirit's working had been well-nigh supplanted by 
another; the great realities of Christ's kingdom were now 
brought to the light of day, and were discoursed of in plain and 



THE PROPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION". 169 

direct terms. This was the only kind of speaking in the Spirit 
which appeared on the day of Pentecost, or was commonly 
practiced in the 'New Testament Church ; so that while the sub- 
stance remained, the form in which it was wrapped necessarily 
disappeared. The promised gift of the Spirit was conferred, 
but with a mode of operation higher than that of which the 
prophet Joel was himself cognizant. 

Yarious other subjects of prophecy might be referred to as 
exemplifying the principle under consideration, but we simply 
point to an additional class of announcements. In not one 
merely, but in a whole series of passages, the predictive assur- 
ances given to Abraham and the patriarchs respecting a seed 
of blessing, are applied first, indeed, to Christ, (in whom they 
were verified as to the form, as well as the substance,) but also 
to believers generally in him, without respect to their genea- 
logical descent, if only they had through the Spirit become 
members of the family of God. These, also, are held in a 
legitimate and proper sense — in a sense included in the proph- 
ecy, and verifying it — to be of the seed promised to Abraham. 
(Luke xix, 9 ; Rom. iv ; Gal. iii, iv.) 

IsTow in all these cases we have examples about which there 
can be no reasonable doubt, examples resting for their proof 
on inspired authority, of precisely such figurative representa- 
tions in the prophets of the Old Testament as the nature of 
their position might have led us to expect. They are one and 
all examples of prophecies which received their accomplish- 
ment as regards the substance, but not as regards the form ; 
for another state of things had entered which rendered this im- 
practicable. But if so in such cases, why not also in others ? 
There is, doubtless, a general uniformity in the style of proph- 
ecies coming by vision, as well as in any other department 
of sacred writing. And specific examples, such as those no- 
ticed, ought to be viewed as so many illustrations, or light in 
an embodied form, let in by the Spirit of God upon some of 
the more select portions of the field, to guide us to a correct 
knowledge and understanding of the rest. Nor are there 
wanting collateral considerations to confirm and strengthen 
the conclusion. 



170 THE PEOPHETIC STYLE A^i^B DICTION". 

(1.) First of all, there is the consideration that the symbolical 
prophecies contained in the manifold types of the Old Testa- 
ment were of a similar nature and had a similar fulfillment. 
They were every one of them made good as to their predictive 
import by the realities of the Gospel, but in forms differing as 
much from the typical representations of them as the realities 
themselves were higher and better than their temporary substi- 
tutes. Since the very body of the religious dispensation under 
which the prophets lived was of such a nature, and carried in 
its bosom the prospect of such a realization in the future, could 
it be otherwise than reasonable and proper that the Spirit of 
prophecy, when giving verbal intimations of the same future, 
should to a large extent have assimilated these in form and 
manner to the other ? 

(2.) A second consideration is found in the circumstance, 
that even before the introduction of the Gospel era, and in re- 
spect to changes far less fundamental and peculiar than that, 
ancient prophecy did certainly predict events in the manner 
now specified; it announced things to come under the formal 
aspect of a recurrence of those which had already happened, 
although the latter proved not to be a repetition of the earlier, 
but only relatively alike. Thus, Hosea, when foretelling the 
approaching bondage and captivity of Israel, represents it as a 
returning again into Egypt ; because there the great example 
of such a state presented itself in the past. But to show it was 
the Egypt-state and not the actual country of Egypt to which 
the prophet referred, he afterward names Assyria as the region 
where the humiliating discipline was to be experienced, and 
even with an apparent contradiction of the former announce- 
ment, declares they should not return to Egypt. Chapter viii, 
13 ; ix, 3 ; xi, 5. Another period in Israel's early history, the 
sojourn in the wilderness, is represented both by Hosea (chap, 
ii) and Ezekiel (chaps, iv and xx) as destined to recur in the 
future ; again, the people were to be led back into the wilder- 
ness, or be subjected to the memorable forty years' chastisement 
on account of sin, that they might be prepared for future mer- 
cies ; but the subsequent mention in Hosea of Assyria as the 
more immediate place of discipline, and Ezekiel's designation 



THE PROPHETIC STYLE AlH) DICTION. 171 

of the wilderness as that " of the peoples," plainly indicate that 
something quite different from a bald repetition of former 
events was intended. In Obadiah's prophecy respecting Edom 
and Israel, the period of the Judges, in like manner, is taken 
as the form under which to predict the future ascendancy of 
Israel ; saviours were to come up on mount Zion, judging the 
mount of Esau, and bringing deliverance to Israel, (verses 17 
and 21, compared with Judges ii, 16 ; iii, 9.) And still more 
strikingly in the description given in Hab. iii, of God's mani- 
festation of himself for judgment, is the history of the past 
taken as a vehicle for revealing what was to take place in the 
approaching future. We have there, not an historical narration 
of what had been done in former times, but a lyri co-prophetical 
celebration of what should take place when God came forth, as 
he was on the eve of doing, to punish sin, first among the back- 
sliding Jews, and then among the proud and lordly Chaldeans. 
Even Delitzsch, with his natural Jewish leanings and love for 
prophetical literalism, feels constrained to adopt this view of 
the description ; he does not suppose that, according to its real 
import, God was actually going to come from Teman, to shake 
the tents of Cushan, to make the land of Midian tremble, and 
such like. 'No, he says most properly, " The prophet borrows 
from the ancient wonders of God, and the descriptions given of 
them, (namely, as to his conducting the covenant people 
through the wilderness,) the traits and features of his delinea- 
tion of a corresponding future, justly considering the one as the 
type of the other. He forms thence the delineation of a great 
day of judgment, which was to combine in itself the severe and 
awful, yet salutary judicial manifestations of God for his people, 
which have ever and anon been taking place of a deliverance 
outshining the typical deliverance out of Egypt. This close 
pre-established connection between the past and the predicted 
future is the reason why the prophet makes Teman and the 
mountains of Paran the starting point of the theophany, and 
represents the tribes on both sides of the Red Sea as in terror 
and confusion." For the principle of this interpretation, the 
authority of Crucius is quoted, who says, " Since future things 
could not yet be narratM historically, which could not indeed 



172 THE PKOPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION. 

have been done with propriety, a tropical mode of speech is 
employed, in which figurative terms are borrowed from things 
that happened at the departure from Egypt and the entrance 
into the land of Canaan, and which are fitly taken as images of 
things that were still to happen." * 

(3.) Still further, there is the consideration that in the lan- 
guage also of the New Testament, and of Christian discourse 
generally, the same practice is constantly followed — the prac- 
tice of expressing new things in a phraseology derived from the 
old ; while yet no one dreams of a formal resemblance between 
the things themselves, or an interpretation of the language ac- 
cording to the letter. At the very commencement of the Gos- 
pel our Lord, poiating to the free intercommunion between 
heaven and earth which was to be the result of his mediation, 
describes it to N^athaniel in the words of Jacob's vision, " Here- 
after ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascend- 
ing and descending on the Son of man ;" not that Jesus was 
ever to present the appearance of a ladder for that purpose, 
such as Jacob saw in his vision, but that in the new and higher 
sphere of his kingdom there should be a like medium of com- 
munication established, and the agency of a like intercourse 
maintained. With a still more specific identification of the 
past and the present, St. Jude represents the filthy dreamers 
of his day as having already perished in the gainsaying of 
Korah. In a similar manner the death of Christ is often spoken 
of under the old sacrificial form of the shedding of the blood, 
and the inward application of his atonement to the soul is 
termed the sprinkling of his blood upon the conscience, and 
baptism is designated his circumcision ; and never scarcely is 
a prayer offered or a Christian discourse heard, without the 
free use in it of words that belong to the old covenant, such as 
altar, priest, sacrifices, Zion, Jerusalem, Canaan. Here again 

* " Der Prophet Habakkuk Ausgelegt," p. 139. Various other predictions might 
have been given besides those specified; such as Ezek. xxix, 11, 12, where the 
forty years' chastisement of the wilderness is threatened even against Egypt ; and 
Zech. V, 5-11, where a second exile to the land of Shinar or Babylon is spoken of 
as in reserve for the covenant people because of the sins that were beginning to 
appear among them ; a repetition of the old calamity is taken to indicate fresh 
judgments. 



THE PEOPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION. 1T3 

the instinctive poetry of the human mind discovers itself in its 
fondness for the sensible and concrete, for the hallowed, though 
in themselves imperfect symbols of the past, in order to express 
its spiritual thoughts and feelings, instead of looking at the 
direct and naked reality. It is a continuing to do from choice 
what the prophets, who lived before the reality appeared, did 
from necessity. And it were even more incongruous to insist 
on an outward and formal agreement between their representa- 
tions of Gospel times, and events that verified them, than in- 
versely to demand the same in respect to the similar, but now 
less absolutely needed representations of Gospel realities under 
the antiquated forms of the old covenant. 

Thus everything, both of a direct and of a collateral kind — 
considerations grounded in the proper nature and function of 
prophecy, in the light thrown upon the style of its predictions 
by the applications made of them in New Testament Scripture, 
in the typical character of the old dispensation, and the predi- 
lection for symbolical modes of speech as well among Christians 
now as with prophets of the former times — all seem to point 
to and establish the conclusion, that in the announcements of 
ancient prophecy respecting the work and kingdom of Christ, 
there must have been a prevailing and characteristic tendency 
to exhibit the new under the image of the old. Whence it 
follows that since the new has come, what appears of the old 
in the prophetical delineations must be interpreted in the light 
of the new ; they must be set loose from their earthly and now 
obsolete form, and seen in the position and aspect of things 
pertaining to the kingdom of heaven. By being so considered 
they are only made to ^eep pace with the progressive march of 
God's dispensations ; and their proper import is no more lost 
than our Lord's proper personality was lost when on the mount 
of transfiguration he was enveloped in the glory of the king- 
dom, or than the essence of Judaism was lost when its prophetic 
symbols passed into the abiding realities of the Gospel. All 
take a simultaneous and corresponding rise. And so far from 
evacuating the meaning of Old Testament predictions, when 
we transfer what they say of Zion or Jerusalem, of the temple 
and its sacrificial worship, of a ransomed people and their 



174 THE PROPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION. 

inheritance of blessing, to the Church of the 'New Testament 
with its clearer light, its ample privileges, and elcvatiDg pros- 
pects, we throw into them fresh life and meaning, illuminate 
their darker side, and render them, like the whole economy to 
which they belonged, in the strictest sense, " the testimony of 
Jesns." 

The whole, however, of this Hne of thought is to be under- 
stood only of the general and prevailing character of the Old 
Testament predictions regarding Messianic times ; and it must 
be taken in connection with what was formerly stated (in the 
first section of this chapter) of the variable and elastic nature 
of prophecy, whereby it could adapt itself to different circum- 
stances, and approximate more to the style of history at one 
time than another. For though communicated in vision, and 
always to a certain extent partaking of the characteristics of 
that mode of revelation, yet by means of spoken explanations 
and continuous statements (as in Daniel's later prophecies 
through the revealing angel) it was capable of assuming more 
of an historical character than would have been practicable in 
a simple vision. N^or should its frequent combination with 
type be overlooked, especially with type as exhibited in the 
representative life of David and the history of Israel ; since 
thus a variety of personal and local traits naturally come to be 
interwoven with its delineations of the future. These were so 
many tangible links connecting the new with the old, and 
served as special helps to a weak faith and a feeble discernment 
at the beginning of the Gospel, that it might the more readily 
assure itself of the certainty of those things which it was called 
to embrace. And yet even these stood so intimately connected 
with things of a higher kind, they were so closely entwined 
with more profound marks of verisimilitude, as to render it 
scarcely possible for those who perceived the external points of 
agreement to avoid discerning others of a more inward and 
spiritual nature. In Christ's birth at Bethlehem, for example, 
or his temporary asylum in Egypt, or the actual piercing of his 
side with a spear, while there was a formal agreement with the 
prophecies mentioned in 'connection with those events by the 
evangelists, there was manifestly something more ; in that out- 



THE PROPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION. 175 

ward verification no intelligent believer could fail to perceive 
the sign and index of a deeper fulfillment, wliich was at the 
same time accomplished, and which reached to the inner mys- 
teries of the kingdom.* 

It is in this typico-historical element more especially, so 
widely difinsed through Old Testament prophecy, that we are 
furnished with a safeguard against the rationalistic tendency to 
carry to excess its figurative character, and are enabled to resist 
the temptation presented by apparent contrarieties between 
prophecy and history, of attempting to resolve all its announce- 
ments into vague generalities. Real contrarieties are not to 
be found, if only the language of prophecy is understood and 
interpreted in accordance with its distinctive nature. But cer- 
tainly there may be no difficulty in finding apparent ones, if 
the same principles of interpretation are indiscriminately ap- 
plied to prophecy and history. And it is the practice alike of 
infidels and rationalists to make diligent search for contrarie- 
ties of this description, which they take to be real, and thence 
argue against everything specific and supernatural in prophecy. 
We shall be prepared and fortified against this error, if we keep 
properly in view the connection between prophecy and type, 
and the comparative approach that might be made, particularly 
in this direction, to a measure of historical distinctness. For 
on account of this connection, it necessarily moved within 
definite relations, which had their historical basis in the past 
and must likewise have a historical basis in the future ; it em- 
braced transactions which had their points of contact with the 
outer world, as those also had which corresponded to them in 
the earlier dispensations. So that in perfect accordance with 
its figurative character, as bearing respect to events which were 
to constitute an extraordinary era, and introduce an immense 
rise in the divine economy, prophecy might and actually did 
contain a considerable variety of particulars which were capable 
of receiving a plain and palpable verification. 

* For the illustration and proof of this, see "Typology of Scripture," Book I, 
chap. V, and Appendix B, on " The Old Testament in the New." 



176 THE PROPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION. 



SECTION V. 

Third Peculiarity of the Prophetic Style and Diction — the 
Exhibition of Events as Present^ or Successive only in Rela- 
tion to each other, rather than as linked to definite Historical 
Ejpochs. 

The scenical nature of the mode in which prophetic revelations 
were given naturally brought along with it this additional pe- 
culiarity : the prophet was in spirit transported into the midst 
of the representations which emblematically unfolded the com- 
ing future, and depicted them as they passed in vision before 
the eye of his mind. Some of these, as in a picture or pano- 
ramic exhibition, might appear nearer, others more remote ; 
one series of actions might be seen to terminate and another to 
begin ; but they must have been continuously present to the 
prophet, or have stood related to each other as successive 
operations in the same line of things. " The prophets," says 
Crucius, " by the divine light which illuminated them, for the 
most part beheld things to come much as we look upon a starry 
sky. For while we see the stars above us we are incapable of 
rightly discerning at how great a distance they are from us, or 
which are nearer and which more remote." So also Bishop 
Horsley, in the main correctly, though not without a certain 
tendency to excess, " If you have observed that this is the con- 
stant style of prophecy, that when a long train of distant events 
are predicted, rising naturally in succession one out of another, 
and all tending to one great end, the whole time of these events 
is never set out in parcels, by assigning the distinct epoch iu 
each, but the whole is usually described as an instant, as what 
it is in the sight of God, and the whole train is exhibited in 
one scene without any marks of succession ; if you consider 
that prophecy, were it more regularly arranged and digested 
in chronological order, would be an anticipated history of the 
world, which would in a great measure defeat the very end of 
prophecy, which is to demonstrate the weakness and ignorance 
of man, as well as the sovereignty and universal rule of Provi- 
dence ; if you take these things into consideration, you will 



THE PROPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION. 17T 

perhaps be inclined to think that they may best interpret the 
ancient prophecies concerning the Messiah who refer to two 
different and distant times as two distinct events — his coming 
to make reconciliation for iniquity, and his coming to cut off 
the incorrigibly wicked." * 

The tendency to excess in this passage betrays itself chiefly 
in the application made of the principle at the close. For if 
that application were altogether correct, it might seem as if 
there were not only an indistinctness as to time in the pro- 
phetic delineations, but an absolute confusion, a juxtaposition 
of things in the prophecy, such as could scarcely fail to beget 
a false expectation in regard to the historical fulfillment. If 
Malachi, for example, at the beginning of chapter iii, on which 
Bishop Horsley more immediately grounds his remarks, had 
described the first coming of the Messiah, and then instantly 
started off' to what was to take place at his second coming, we 
are at a loss to see how the prophecy could have been of any 
service in bearing testimony to the claims of Jesus. For in 
such a case the question must instantly have arisen, why 
should the results specified have stood so entirely disjoined in 
fact from the coming, with which they are prophetically asso- 
ciated ? One can easily conceive that the results indicated may 
not have been accomplished at once, or may have received 
nothing more than an initiatory accomplishment at the period 
of the first advent; but to have conjoined with this advent 
results which were not to come then into operation at all, nor 
till another advent separated from it by the distance of centu- 
ries, must inevitably have tended to give rise to false anticipa- 
tions beforehand, and created afterward a most embarrassing 
perplexity. It was not necessary, however, and here lay the 
ground of Horsley's partial misapprehension — that the first 
coming of the Messiah should always be specially connected , 
with the work of reconciliation, as if that were its only object, 
and as if the first coming were to have nothing in common 
with the second. There was to be in many respects a funda- 
mental agreement between them ; and in particular the work 
of judgment, which is to have its consummation at the second, 

* Works, vol. i, p. 83. 
12 



178 THE PROPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION. 

began also to take effect at the period of the first coming. It 
is tnie, that the more immediate and ostensible purpose for 
which our Lord came into the world was not to condemn, but 
to save it. Yet he himself testifies, " For judgment am I come 
into this world, that they which see not might see, and that 
they which see might be made blind." So, even at the period 
of his birth it had been announced by the aged Simeon, when 
he said, " This child is set for the fall and for the rising again 
of many in Israel ;" and again by the Baptist, when he spoke 
of the coming Saviour as one " whose fan was in his hand, and 
he would thoroughly purge his floor ;" or, shifting the image, 
" who would lay the ax to the root of the tree." Indeed, the 
work of judgment is inseparable from the manifestation of the 
truth ; when the one is brought to bear upon the hearts and 
consciences of men, the other infallibly takes effect upon their 
condition. And therefore, in the prophecy of Malachi respect- 
ing the coming of the Lord, there is no need for any formal 
separation between what is designated the first and the second 
advent ; the judicial procedure with which it is associated be- 
longs to the one as well as to the other ; only in the first there 
was necessarily a reserve and a limit in its operations, while in 
the second it will be complete and final. 

It is a relative merely, not a total disregard of time that was 
proper to the scenical representations of prophecy. An exact 
and detailed chronological order was incompatible with its 
nature, yet not such an order as might be sufficient to mark 
the comparative distance or progression of events. There is a 
perspective -also in the delineations of prophecy. Hence the 
language -of Balaam, " I see him, but not now ; I behold him, 
but not nigh." ]S^um. xxiv, 17. A glorious personage rose upon 
his view, but one descried as at a remote point on the field of 
vision, because not to appear for ages to come on the theater 
of the world's history. Hence, also, Daniel's successive mon- 
archies ; successive, and yet in a manner coexistent, for only 
with the establishment of the last do the others seem finally 
to disappear. More commonly, however, the description of 
the future is presented in a kind of continuity, exhibited under 
some particular phase, and in that carried onward to its proper 



THE PROPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION. 179 

coiifeiinmiation. Thus, in the prophecy of Isaiah respecting 
Babylon, noticed in the preceding section, the whole drama of 
lier coming downfall and rnin is set forth in an unbroken de- 
lineation, which in one rapid sketch embraces the history of 
ages, and connects with the first stroke of vengeance inflicted 
by the Medes the last sad proofs of her prostrate condition. A 
representation precisely sijnilar is given by Jeremiah respect- 
ing the same proud city, (chapters 1 and li ;) and by Ezekiel 
respecting Tyre, Egypt, and Assyria, (chapters xxvi to xxxii.) 
Many also of the prophecies respecting Christ and his times 
possess the same character ; they comprise the entire outline 
of the history in the particular aspect or class of relations under 
which they present it. Striking examples of this are to be 
found in such psalms as the ii, xlv, Ixxii, ex, or in the eleventh 
chapter of Isaiah, where, after having depicted in the chapter 
preceding the discomfiture and overthrow of the Assyrian 
power, which was then the peculiar rival and enemy of the 
kingdom of God, the prophet breaks forth into the description 
of a new and very different scene in the land of the covenant. 
This scene began with the appearance as of a tender shoot out 
ol the decayed stem of Jesse, by which beyond doubt is to be 
understood the Messiah in his original humiliation and outward 
littleness. But presently the personage thus appearing in com- 
parative insignificance rises to the highest place of power and 
authority, shows himself to be possessed of the noblest qualities 
and endowments ; and in the exercise of these proceeds onward, 
till every enemy is subdued, unrighteousness in every form is 
put down, and universal harmony and blessing is restored. In 
this delineation everything is left indefinite as to time. The 
preceding downfall of Assyria, with which it is connected, 
merely furnishes the occasion for bringing out the contrast that 
should, in this respect, be found to exist between the worldly 
and the divine kingdom — the one being destined to pass from 
its peerless height of grandeur to utter annihilation, the other 
to rise from the lowest depression to universal dominion and 
imperishable glory. But while the delineation is indefinite as 
to time, in the nature of the things described it is compara- 
tively distinct and complete; and as regards the particular 



180 THE PROPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION. 

aspect under which the things of God's kingdom are here con- 
templated, the prospective outline reaches from the commence- 
ment to the close. In like manner, in the second part of 
Isaiah's writings, amid all the phases presented of the Re- 
deemer's history and work, the progress of his cause, and the 
triumphs of his kingdom, no notes of time are anywhere given ; 
each successive scene is described as in itself complete, and the 
order of events no further indicated than that some things were 
to stand in a relation of priority to others. The same substan- 
tially may be said of the prophets generally, more especially 
when they discourse of the coming events of the Gospel. They 
knew that it was of the remoter future that they spake, although 
we are informed they had to make diligent inquiry before even 
this could be rightly ascertained. (2 Pet. i, 10, 11.) As much 
also is implied in the general nature of the formula with which 
their predictions of the Messianic times are usually introduced ; 
the things spoken of are announced merely for "the latter 
days ;" so that it is clear the prophetic Spirit could have no 
intention of marking out distinctly beforehand the times and 
seasons of the " world to come." 

Yet here also the accommodating and variable nature of 
prophecy discovered itself; for as vision and dream commonly 
went together in the imparting of the revelation, so in the 
dream words might be heard with reference to the time, defin- 
ing more or less exactly the period of the transactions which 
presented themselves in the vision. Such actually was the case 
in respect to some of the predictions ; they were associated with 
certain prophetic periods. Occasionally this was done when a 
test of prophetic verity had to be given. The test was made, 
wholly or in part, to consist of a particular event happening 
within a specific time, as when Isaiah foretold the destruction 
of the kingdom of Israel in threescore and ^yq years, or when 
Elijah declared that for three whole years there should be no 
rain in Israel. Such signs, however, were but rarely given ; 
and when they were, they rather belonged to the nature of 
wonders or miracles, than to prophecy in its more regular 
operations. But besides this, in times of peculiar difficulty 
and depression, the introduction of the element of time might 



THE PROPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION. 181 

be necessary to aiford the consolation which was required for 
the people of God. Above all others in the history of the Cov- 
enant people, the period of the Babylonish captivity was of 
that description. Everything seemed then verging to utter 
ruin ; and not merely a prospective deliverance, but a deliver- 
ance within some definite period, was needed to reassure and 
strengthen the heart of faith. It is accordingly at this period 
that we have one of the most specific announcements as to 
time in Old Testament prophecy ; in the intimation that at the 
end of seventy years the season of captivity and desolation 
should expire, (Jer. xxv, 11.) Yet even here the period was 
not exactly determined ; for as the captivity was effected at 
three successive stages, from any one of which the seventy years 
might, with some appearance of probability, have been dated, 
the expiry of the period by no means lay upon the surface, and 
Daniel himself only ascertained it by searching into books, 
(chap, ix, 2.) A much greater obscurity, however, must neces- 
sarily have hung over the mystical notes of time in some of 
Daniel's own visions ; the seventy weeks that were determined 
upon his people and the holy city ; the fourfold succession of 
worldly monarchies, with the setting up, during the last of 
them, of the kingdom of heaven ; the time, times, and the 
dividing of time, during which the power represented by the 
little horn was to prevail ; and the several other nimibers 
which afterward occur in connection with the later visions of 
his book. Such indications of time obviously bear obscurity 
and indistinctness upon their very front. They were intended 
to conceal not less than to disclose ; and while on the one 
hand, they set a limit to the prevalence of evil, or fixed a 
period for the accomplishment of promised good, on the other 
hand they so determined this as to require the most careful 
inquiry and patient consideration of the march of Providence, 
before ultimate assurance could be obtained respecting it. 
Daniel expressly testifies he did not himself understand what 
he heard of some of those numbers, (chap, viii, 27; xii, 8.) 
And yet such helps did they furnish to an inquiring faith, and 
such checks did they set to artful imposture, that through them 
and similar landmarks in the prophetic word, general expecta- 



182 THE PKOPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION. 

tion was awakened at the time of Christ's appearance. The 
history of the period, the more it is examined and understood, 
the more it is found to possess points of coincidence with the 
notes of time and other circumstances in prophecy ; and pres- 
ently after, the relative position of things became so completely 
changed, that a proper agreement between the two ceased to 
be any longer possible. 

This aversion of prophecy to clearly defined historical periods, 
its tendency to exhibit coming events under relations in space 
or time, or as successive only, without being on either hand 
definitely bounded, appears also in 'New Testament predictions. 
It appears in the discourses of Christ himself, in whom the 
Spirit resided above measure, and who received no revelations 
in dream or vision. He gives certain signs of the approaching 
destruction of Jerusalem, and of his own personal return to 
the world, by the carefal consideration of which his followers 
might not be taken unawares by either event ; but the precise 
period in both cases is altogether indeterminate, l^ay, so es- 
sential did he deem it to the spiritual interests of his Church to 
have the time so left as regards the great object now of the 
Church's expectation, his own second coming, that he refrained 
from knowing it himself when on earth. He vohmtai'ily re- 
frained from doing so ; for beyond doubt, he might have had 
the knowledge of that also if he had so willed it, since, as the 
Son in the highest sense, he knew the Father, (Matt, xi, 27 ;) 
nay, had all things of the Father's delivered into his hand, 
(John xvi, 15.) But he did not will it ; he purposely restrained 
the intercommunion between the divine and human natures 
that he might exhibit himself an example to his people, as not 
seeking to know what were not proper to be known, even by 
the most perfect, in their state of humiliation and trial. There- 
fore he said, " Of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not 
the angels which are in heaven ; neither the Son but the 
Father." Mark xiii, 32. Not only so, but when the disciples 
showed at their last interview with their Master that they had 
failed to profit aright by this declaration, and came to him 
with the question whether he was then going to restore the 
kingdom to Israel, he rebuked their curiosity by the answer 



THE PKOPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION. 183 

" It is not for you to know the times or the seasons which the 
Father has put in his own power." This specific announce- 
ment, delivered in a face-to-face communication, we may bo 
sure, from the fundamental laws of prophetic revelation, could 
not be annulled by any subsequent information on the subject, 
communicated in vision. It fixed from the first the abiding 
condition of the Church as regards the hnowledge of coming 
epochs in her history. It did so, more especially in regard to 
the great epoch of her Lord's personal return. And whatever 
insight the visions of the Apocalypse might be intended to give 
in respect to the hind and order of events which were to fill up 
the intervening space, it were unreasonable to expect that they 
should be such as to throw any determinate light upon the pre- 
cise period of the end. Interpretations pretending to derive 
from them light of this description, betray, in the very preten- 
sion, their own vanity, and cannot fail, as often as renewed, to 
afford fresh proof of the folly of attempting to penetrate a vail 
which God has wisely resolved to hang over the events of the 
future. 

Let it not, however, be supposed that the revelations of 
prophecy contain no materials for aiding our inquiries concern- 
ing the probable approach of the greater movements and issues 
of Providence. There is here also a growing light, which will 
be found sufficient for all practical purposes, if it is carefully 
sought for and applied. The events of Gospel history sepa- 
rated between things which had not been accurately discrimin- 
ated in respect to time on the page of prophecy ; and the 
visions of the Apocalypse were, no doubt, designed to light up 
more clearly the prospect of the future by exhibiting it in suc- 
cessive and cotemporaneous forms of development. It is only 
by the facts and revelations of the ISTew Testament, that ancient 
prophecy has been found conclusively to require for its com- 
plete verification two disparate manifestations of Godhead ; 
the one in humiliation the other in glory. And had we not 
possessed the visions of the Apocalyse, we could hardly have 
imagined the interval between the commencement of Messiah's 
reign, and its proper consummation, was to be so great, or that 
it was to admit of so complicated a drama of good and evil, of 



184 THE PEOPHETIC STYLE AND DICTION. 

sucli maDifold and successive waves of sin and judgment, trial 
and victory. On this account alone the book occupies a most 
important place, and fills what would otherwise be a grievous 
blank in the general scheme of revelation. But from its very 
structure, and more especially from the mystical numbers it 
employs, and the absence of any explicit information as to the 
relation of the different visions it unfolds to each other, it is 
plain that nothing more than probable grounds of expectation 
beforehand, or moral certainty afterward, should be looked for 
in respect to the events of which it speaks. 

Should this be reckoned strange ? Should it be viewed as 
derogating to some extent from the honor and usefulness of the 
prophetic word ? Should we not rather esteem it matter of 
just admiration, that men who were endowed with such pro- 
found insight into the future, should in this particular have 
been led to exhibit so peculiar a reserve on , their communica- 
tions ? Here, especially, the impatient curiosity of the human 
mind is ever and anon going in quest of specific information ; 
and the world's prophets seldom want the will, however often 
they prove destitute of the power to gratify it. But we have 
only to search the records of divination to learn what disastrous 
results have followed its presumptuous attempts in this direc- 
tion, even when by a fortunate coincidence the prognostica- 
tions have found a verification in Providence ; and what num- 
berless proofs they have afforded of the observation : 

" Oftentimes, to win us to our harm, 

The instruments of darkness tell us truths I " 

Most commonly, indeed, it is falsehoods under the color of 
truths that have been told. Yet even truths, when told out of 
their proper place and time respecting the future, have ever 
proved among the deadliest snares to human virtue. In great- 
est mercy, therefore, as well as wisdom, God has restrained his 
servants from breaking too rashly the seal of the future. He 
has permitted them to impart only such a measure of knowl- 
edge concerning things to come as might not be out of propor- 
tion to our other endowments. In special emergencies, when 
more than common light was needed for direction and encour- 



THE PROPHETIC STYLE AKD DICTION". 185 

agement, lie has disclosed something even of the times and sea- 
sons of coming events. But as comparatively little could have 
been communicated on such points with safety, so it has always 
been done with the most sparing hand, and seldom without a 
covering of secresy. And in nothing, perhaps, more than in 
this wonderful combination of darkness and light observable in 
the prophetic word ; in the clear foreknowledge it displays on 
the one hand, of the greater things to come in Providence, 
coupled on the other with only such indications of time and 
place as might be sufficient to stimulate inquiry, and ulti- 
mately dispel doubt, may we discern the directing agency 
of Him who knows our frame, and knows as well what is 
fit to be withheld as what to be imparted in supernatural 
communications. 



186 THE INTEK-CONNECTED AND 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE INTER-CONNECTED AND PROGRESSIVE CHARACTER OF 

PROPHECY. 

Yery considerable misapprelieiisioiis have arisen, and botli 
partial and mistaken views have been propounded respecting 
particular prophecies, by considering them singly and apart, 
withont regard to the place they hold in the general scheme of 
prophetical development. Their relation to snch a scheme was 
not a matter of accident, but one of wise and orderly adjust- 
ment ; not, indeed, on the part of the prophets who uttered 
the predictions, but of the inspii'ing Spirit from whom the 
communications really proceeded. The prophets themselves 
spake as they were nioved, and as the circumstances of the 
time required ; but both in the personal qualifications of the 
prophets, and in the particular messages they were commis- 
sioned to deliver, a regard was had to the prophecies which 
had been previously uttered, to the more or less complete ful- 
fillment they had received, and the further progress that re- 
mained to be made. The testimony of prophecy, therefore, 
like the testimony of history, is a chain composed of many 
links, each running into others before and after it, and by the 
introduction of some fresh particulars, or some different aspect 
of the truth, contributing at once to the elucidation of the past, 
and to a more explicit representation of the future. 

This unity of plan and mutual inter-connection of parts, with 
progressive action on the whole, is precisely what was to have 
been expected in prophecy, on the supposition of its being the 
product of one and the same Spirit, operating in connection 
with a gradual and growing development of the divine purpose 
in respect to the world's redemption. In such a case it is but 
natural to infer, from what appears in the divine works gen- 
erally, that as the end must have been contemplated from the 



PKOGRESSIVE CHARACTER OF PROPHECY 187 

beginning, so the whole burden of prophecy would be com- 
prised even in its earlier utterances, but only that it might be 
afterward expanded into such variety of parts as was required 
by the manifold and ever-changing phases of the world's his- 
tory, and the onward progress of the scheme of God. So it 
was in reality, as the following brief but comprehensive sketch 
very strikingly unfolds : " At first, the word of God is as a 
seed, it may be of the oak or of any other plant, in which the 
whole majestic form and various parts of the future lie undis- 
closed, ready to reveal themselves when the times and the sea- 
sons and other conditions which God has appointed to determ- 
ine its being shall have taken their course. And there is no 
break, nor leap, nor start in its course, which proceeds by a 
slow, and sweet, and beautiful progression, to perfect that pur- 
pose or word of God, which said at the beginning, ' Let the 
earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit- 
tree yielding fruit after its kind, whose seed is in itself.' So 
the first great promise made in Eden contains the whole of the 
revelation and prophecy of God in an embryo state : first, the 
enmity between the seed of the woman and the seed of the ser- 
pent, which has produced all the persecutions endured by the 
Church from the world since the time of righteous Abel until 
this hour, and which she shall endure till the resurrection. 
The second part of it, ' Thou shalt bruise his heel,' has been 
likewise developing itself during the whole of the same long 
period, in which the heel, or lowest part of the Church's body, 
that is, our carnal, natural life, has been vexed and crucified 
by him during life, and lies bruised unto dust in the grave ; 
but at the resurrection the Church shall bruise his head, cast- 
ing him out of his usurped domination, and reigning over him 
for ever and ever. Therefore it is written, both of Christ and 
his Church, that they shall rule the nations with a rod of iron, 
and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel, and have all 
their enemies under their footstool. We have not room to 
trace the progress of this seed sown in Paradise, as it is devel- 
oped in the progress of revelation, and shoots its roots into the 
soil of the fallen world, and spreads its branches into the atmos- 
phere of time until it shall possess the whole earth ; yet in 



188 THE INTEK-COKNECTED AND 

order to show how true the principle is, let us trace it out a 
little. We have the promise to Abraham still made of a seed, 
and now all nations are to inherit the blessing, in whose right 
their father Abraham is infeoffed in a country by the divine 
word. In the mouth of David the promise is still of a seed to 
come, which has now attained the high stature of a triumphant 
and universal king of Judah by pre-eminence, of all the earth 
by equal privilege ; in this same character of a king, the child 
is made known to the immediate precursors of his birth, Zach- 
arias, Elisabeth, Mary, John ; in the same character to Simeon, 
though now His sufferings and the calling of the Gentiles be 
hinted as first to happen, which he labors all his life long to 
make intelligible to ]^icodemus, to his apostles, and all his dis- 
ciples. In no other character does Peter declare him after 
the day of Pentecost ; and James in the council of Jerusalem, 
and the two shining ones on Mount Olivet, and Paul and all 
the apostles, than as the King, who ascended on high without 
seeing corruption, waiting and expecting, till the Father shall 
accomplish the times and the seasons, and bring in the days of 
refreshing spoken of by all the prophets, the restitution of all 
things waited for by the whole creation of God. In no other 
way does John see him in the Apocalypse than as a child, the 
seed of a woman, caught up to God and his throne, and there 
abiding until, after certain sore warfares and persecutions of 
his Church, he comes again with many crowns upon his head, 
and followed by all the armies of heaven in order to break the 
confederacy of Satan's powers, to bind the old serpent himself, 
and cast him into the bottomless pit with all the nations that 
forget God. There is such a soft, sweet, and silent develop- 
ment of this one seed sown in Paradise, and which in its 
growth doth change the earth into paradise again, reproducing 
that hind of blessedness which the world was then deprived of, 
that this alone has ever to thoughtful men marked revelation 
as a divine work, comprehending the restitution, regeneration, 
and complete blessedness of man and his habitation. Like the 
stately branching oak which begins in an acorn, and of which 
the end and purpose is to generate an acorn, while during the 
progress of its stately growth it covers every beast of the earth 



PEOGRESSIVE CHARACTER OF PROPHECY. 189 

with its kindly shade, and nestles every bird of heaven in its 
ample branches ; so this promise was sown in the soil of a per- 
fect and perfectly blessed state, while man still dwelt in Para- 
dise, and its end is to produce perfectly blessed men dwelling 
in Paradise again ; while during all the ages of its growth, it 
should bless the immortal spirits of men with salvation, and its 
leaves be for the healing of the nations.* 

In this outline which we present, chiefly because of the 
happy manner in which it connects together the beginning and 
the end, and exhibits the analogy that subsists between God's 
method of working in nature and in grace, only some of the 
more obvious links are noticed. When the matter is looked at 
more closely, far more is discovered of the progressive unfold- 
ing of the first promise, and of the inter-connection between it 
and subsequent prophecies, and of these again with each other. 
Before we reach the time of Abraham, reference is made to it 
in the benediction of l!Toah upon Shem, which defines to some 
extent the line through which the blessing was to come upon 
the world ; it was to be directly in connection with Shem, and 
mediately, through a participation with that line, upon the 
other branches of the human family. Then the revelation to 
Abraham may be said to combine together the word of !Noah 
and the original promise ; it makes promise of a seed of bless- 
ing, which was to spread and prosper and have the ascendency 
in the world, and defines still more exactly the line by which 
it should proceed ; singling out the family of Abraham, setting 
it in the highest place, and linking indissolubly with it the bet- 
ter destinies of the world. Along with the promise of the land 
of Canaan for a possession to his seed, or, as it was afterward 
defined, to a select portion of his seed after the flesh, the word 
given to Abraham was, " I will make of thee a great nation, 
and I will bless thee, and make thy name great, and tliou shalt 
be a blessing. And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse 
him that curseth thee, and in thee all the families of the earth 
shall be blessed." 

This great promise to Abraham was in one sense only a lim- 
itation of the original promise ; it merely chalked out a partic- 

* Irving's Preface to Ben Ezra, p. Ixxi, etc. 



190 THE INTER-CONNECTED AND 

ular channel, throngli wliicli divine grace should flow in raising 
up a spiritual seed, to resist and baffle and drive out the 
tempter ; yet in the actual form which it gave to the expected 
good, more especially in the relations it established with a view 
to the accomplishment of what was promised, it became a 
germinant word for all future prophecy before the coming of 
Christ. From henceforth prophecy takes what may be called 
the Abrahamic type. Connecting, as this fundamental promise 
did, the particular vsdth the general, the hope of the world 
with a chosen family and a local territory, the same particular- 
ism ever after adheres to prophecy ; it moves continually within 
the relations, which date their commencement from the call of 
the Father of the faithful. The relations are variously modi- 
fied ; new elements are ever and anon intermingled with them 
to make out the progressive exhibition of the future ; but only 
as gradual developments of what already existed, additional 
branches springing out of the old stock and clustering around 
it, not the production of a stock altogether new. Thus the 
prophetic disclosures successively made to Isaac and Jacob are 
little more than renewals of the original promise to Abraham, 
with certain indications regarding the mode in which it was to 
proceed to its accomplishment. Even the remarkable proph- 
ecy of Jacob, " The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a 
lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh (the peaceful one) 
come ; and unto him shall the gathering of the peoples be," is 
merely a step forward in the same line ; it simply associates 
the divine purpose as disclosed to Abraham, primarily with the 
tribal ascendency of Judah, and ultimately with a distinguished 
individual of that tribe, in whom the fullness of power and 
blessing was to reach its culminating point, and diffuse itself 
throughout the nations of the earth. Balaam ere long catches 
up the strain of the dying patriarch, and along with the other 
expansions of the Abrahamic promise, proclaims the rise of the 
bright day-star of which Jacob spoke ; the glorious and mighty 
Lord, who should rule with resistless might, but rule only to 
subdue the evil and establish the good. The current grows in 
volume as it proceeds. The house of David comes into view 
as the election within the election, the seed out of all the tribes 



PEOGEESSIVE CHARACTER OF PROPHECY. 191 

of Israel and the families of Judah, whicli by virtue of its pecul- 
iar relationship to God, was to attain to the ascendency in the 
affairs of men, and carry the blessings of salvation and peace 
to the remotest habitations. Here, again, a fresh start is taken 
by the prophetic word, another stage is reached, and the set- 
tlement of the power and the glory forever in connection with 
the house of David, as disclosed in the fundamental prophecy 
of iN'athan, (2 Sam. vii,) appears at once as a certain consum- 
mation of the earlier predictions given to Abraham and his 
posterity, and the seed-corn of other predictions that point to 
a still brighter and greater future. Hence these other predic- 
tions have respect alike to the more general and the more spe- 
cial relations indicated in what had been spoken and done ; 
they point back sometimes to the less definite covenant of 
blessing made with Abraham, sometimes to the more personal 
and specific form it assumed in connection with the house and 
lineage of David ; and not unfrequently the language carries a 
distinct reference to both together. The Messianic psalms and 
the later Messianic prophecies generally, are constructed 
mainly on the basis of Nathan's prophecy and the relations it 
introduced respecting the kingdom, yet not so as to lose sight 
of the earlier promise and the fulfillment it was to receive by 
the others coming into play. Thus, in the seventy-second 
Psalm, which is throughout a prophecy of Him who was to be 
emphatically the King, and of the character of his kingdom, it 
is said at verse 17, with evident reference to the Abrahamic 
promise, " And they shall bless themselves in him, all nations 
shall call him blessed ; " and again in Psalm xxii, 27, "All 
the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the Lord ; 
and all the families of the Gentiles shall worship before him." 
It is as much as to say, then shall the blessing of Abraham 
have come upon the Gentiles. In Jer. xxxiii, 22, the promise 
of a continued and flourishing condition to the house and king- 
dom of David is thrown, doubtless for the purpose of marking 
more distinctly the connection between the two, into the 
peculiar form of the Abrahamic promise, "As the host of 
heaven cannot be numbered, neither the sand of the sea meas- 
ijred, so will I multiply the seed of David my servant ; " 



192 THE IKTEE-CONNECTED AND 

althougli tlie covenant with David had respect, not so properly 
to a numerous offspring as to a perpetual and glorious succes- 
sion in the kingdom. And in Zech. xiv, 16-19, which obvi- 
ously has respect to the closing issues of Messiah's kingdom on 
earth, the word of promise to Abraham as to those being 
blessed who blessed him, and cursed who cursed him, and all 
the families of the earth being at last blessed in him, is taken 
up and applied in Zechariah's peculiar manner ; the nations, as 
in the old promise, have the designation of " all the families of 
the earth," and they are represented as going to be blessed or 
cursed, according as they did or did not go to worship before 
the Lord with his covenant people.* 

Such examples show very distinctly the consecutive as well 
as progressive nature of prophecy — how tenaciously it adheres 
to the old channels, maintains the original impress, and pro- 
ceeds by way of development under relations already settled 
and known, rather than by the introduction of others essentially 
different and new. They show that, as regards the great stream 
of prophecy, the past never properly dies ; it is perpetually 
resumed and carried forward in the future. Earlier develop- 
ments become only the historical basis, out of which spring the 
announcement of more matured and diversified results. It is 
thus that the historical goes along with the prophetical, the 
one ever furnishing, by its fresh evolutions, the occasion and 
ground-work on which the other proceeds to unfold some fur- 
ther aspect of the scheme of God. And instructive as well as 
interesting is it to mark how the history was moulded, some- 
times even into peculiar and unexpected shapes, to open the 
way and provide the materials for the progressive informations 
of prophecy. The circumstances of David's time were remark- 
able illustrations of this, which were all divinely ordered, so as 
to make the beginning prophetic of the end. Even the changes 
to the worse, that afterward arose — the falling down, as it is 
called, of the tabernacle of David, or the decaying of his once 
stately tree, till it had become like a scathed and branchless 
stump — though singularly trying to faith in the mean time, was 

* See this subject of the developments of the earlier prophecies ably handled in 
Hengstenberg's "Christology," vol. i, second edition. 



PEOGRESSIVE CHARACTER OF PROPHECY. 193 

improved bj the Spirit of prophecy to the end of bringing out 
more distinctly and graphically than might otherwise have 
been possible, the deep humiliation and adverse circumstances 
amid which the kingdom was ultimately to rise from the dust 
and advance toward its perfected condition. But perha]3s the 
most striking example to be found of this moulding of the his- 
torical relations and occurrences, to admit of prophecy, without 
essentially altering the form of its representations, progressively 
adapting these to the approaching future, is furnished by the 
changes, in themselves changes to the worse, that entered after 
the return from Babylon. Yarious points might be mentioned 
in this connection, but one very particularly indicates the fore- 
seeing eye and presiding agency of God. An anomalous and, 
as regards the history of the period, an almost inexplicable 
state of things then began. While the work of God generally 
was revived among the covenant people, and the house of David 
did not want a worthy representative in the person of Zerub- 
babel, yet that house itself did not revive in the same propor- 
tion as the rest ; it even fell, after a little, into complete abey- 
ance ; and, notwithstanding that the hopes of the people were 
all suspended on the appearance of a glorious personage of the 
seed royal, it was not the royal but the priestly line that rose 
to the place of power and authority in Judah. This was no 
doubt partly ordained to the end, that when the promised 
child appeared the hand of God might be more evidently seen 
in his rise to the possession of the kingdom. But it was partly 
also, and indeed more immediately appointed for another pur- 
pose : for the purpose of directing the thoughts and expecta- 
tions of the Church to the priestly element in Messiah's char- 
acter, which in the prophecies founded on the relations of 
David's time had been somewhat obscured by the kingly. The 
reverse now takes place ; the kingly falls into the background, 
and the priestly rises in its stead. Hence, in the prophecies of 
this period, those of Zechariah, Haggai, and Malachi, a quite 
peculiar place is given to the priesthood ; and though Zerub- 
babel is once and again mentioned as the representative of the 
royal house, yet it is Joshua, the high-priest, who is formally 

exalted to the head of the covenant people, and is even taken 

13 



194: THE INTER-CONNECTED AND 

as a type to foreshadow the future Joshua or Saviour-king. In 
the third chapter of Zechariah, after being set up as a type of 
the people, first clothed in filthy garments, then in others fair 
and comely — a sign of forgiveness and acceptance — a charge is 
addressed to Joshua, to walk in the ways of God, coupled with 
the assurance, that if he did thus walk it would be given him 
to "judge the house of the Lord and keep his courts ;" in other 
words, to have regal as well as priestly power. And then, after 
declaring Joshua and his fellows, in this, to be men of wonders 
or signs, the prophet goes on to read the import of the transac- 
tion, by making promise of the Branchy the Lord's anointed 
already promised under that name, by whom the iniquity of 
the people was really to be purged away, and who, as the true 
Shiloh, would give them to sit in peace, every man under his 
vine and under his fig-tree. In like manner in the sixth chap- 
ter Joshua is expressly set forth, with crowns upon his head, 
as the representative of '' the Man whose name is the Branch," 
of whom it is said, " He shall build the temple of the Lord," 
build it, namely, in the true and proper sense, as contradis- 
tinguished from that inferior and shadowy sense in which 
Joshua and his companions were then doing it. " And," it is 
.added, " He shall bear the glory, and shall sit and rule upon 
his throne ; and he shall be a priest upon his throne ; and 
the counsel of peace shall be between them both." In Malachi 
also it is the state and calling of the priesthood that are pecul- 
iarly dwelt upon, and the most explicit prophecy that is given 
of the coming Messiah represents him as going to establish 
the covenant which the sons of Levi were violating, and accom- 
plish a work of thorough purification upon the members of the 
covenant. 

Thus was it wisely ordered by the providence of God, that 
in the last announcements of prophecy, that aspect of the Mes- 
;siah's character and mission should be the most distinctly, as 
from the turn given to affairs it was also quite naturally, 
brought out, which was the first to be formally established, 
;and which was to constitute the ground-work of all that should 
follow. It was nothing absolutely new, however ; but only a 
more palpable and prominent exhibition of what had been 



PROaRESSIVE CHARACTER OF PROPHECY. 195 

frequently indicated in earlier, and was involved even in the 
earliest prophetical announcements. And so, when prophecy 
enters on its proper fulfillment, the whole appear to have 
simultaneously reached their end ; the relations, whether more 
general or more particular, under which the future had been 
predicted, are once for all established in the higher sphere of 
Gospel realities, so that the end may be said to embrace the 
beginning. When Christ enters the world, he is made known 
as pre-eminently the seed of Abraham, through whom the 
blessing, so long promised, comes upon the gentiles ; as the 
son of David, who appears to rectify every evil, and set up the 
throne of the kingdom in righteousness and truth ; as the high- 
priest, also, who bears away the iniquity of his people, and in 
his own blood lays the foundation of his kingdom ; receives the 
crown of glory in the heavenly places, because he has suffered 
unto death in the earthly. His followers become Abraham's 
children, the true Israelites, fellow-citizens with the saints and 
of the household of God, a chosen generation, a royal priest- 
hood, ministering before God in light and purity in the midst 
of surrounding gentiles, (1 Pet. ii, 5, 12 ; 3 John 7 ;) at death 
going to Abraham's bosom ; at the regeneration sitting down 
with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of God ; nay, 
at the restitution of all things, entering paradise as the woman's 
victorious seed, and taking their place beside the tree of life, 
and the river, clear as crystal, that proceeds from the throne 
of God and the Lamb. In reality, and looking to the order of 
nature, Christ is the root of all ; in him and from him the 
whole proceeds ; and so it is declared in Scripture with the 
greatest plainness and frequency. But out of regard to the 
historical element, which plays so important a part in the rev- 
elations of Scripture, the older relations are still preserved in 
the word of promise, in order to connect prophecy with its ful- 
fillment, and to render manifest the. consecutive as well as pro- 
gressive character of its revelations. 

But it is clear that if this holds in regard to one class of 
relations, it must equally do so in regard to anotlier. The man- 
ner and style of prophecy must be uniform, if it is to be intel- 
ligible. The relations we have referred to, as embodied in its 



196 THE INTER-CONNECTED AND 

representations — ^progressively embodied, as its views of the 
future came to be progressively nnfolded— are those of 2i per- 
sonal and social kind ; but in intimate connection with these 
there were also local relations, which stand side by side with 
the other in the delineations of prophecy. They were not 
merely poetical beings in connection with whom it revealed the 
future ; they had their place amid the realities of sense and 
time. Eve was connected with a paradise of life and blessing 
before her fall, as with a cursed and troubled earth afterward ; 
and the prophecies respecting her victorious seed point to the 
uplifting of this curse, and the return to that paradise again. 
Abraham, with his immediate offspring Isaac and Jacob, were 
also connected by promise with a specific territory ; and the 
covenant made with Abraham as distinctly and properly in- 
cludes an inheritance of blessing, as a seed of blessing that 
should become coextensive with the families of the earth. In 
the history and prophecy alike, the two are bound up insepar- 
ably together. Circumcision was appointed as the seal of the 
covenant, mthout the remotest hint of a division in respect to 
these objects, so that it can only be characterized as a fiction 
of modern times to connect it with the one of these more than 
with the other. We must here also proclaim the word, " What 
God hath joined together, let no man put asunder." Certainly 
the prophets of the Old Testament did not do so. As they 
employ \h.Q personal and social relations of Abraham and his 
posterity to unfold the character and purposes of the great 
scheme of God, so with these they ever conjoin the territorial^ 
and Canaan, Jerusalem, Zion, are at every step mixed up with 
Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, David, Solomon, and others, in 
the prospective exhibition of the better things to come. What 
under the one class of relations is represented as the blessing 
of Abraham diffusing itself to all the families of the earth, ap- 
pears under the other as the King of Zion, having the heathen 
for his heritage, or reigning in peace and righteousness to the 
ends of the earth ; or as Israel being third with Egypt and 
Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth, (Isa. xix, 24 ;) or 
people ont of Egypt, Babylon, Ethiopia, and other countries, 
going to be born in Zion, and many representations of a like 



PROGEESSIYE CHARACTER OF PROPHECY. 197 

nature. I^Tor is it otlierwise wlien we pass to writers of tlie 
'New Testament. They tell us indeed tliat baptism has taken 
the place of circumcision, but in its entireness, not in respect 
merely to a part of its symbolical and sealing import. They 
speak with reference to Christians generally, of our fathers 
having passed under the cloud and through the sea. They 
designate believers, not only Abraham's children, but heirs 
also with him, according to the promise ; heirs, namely, of 
what he himself was heir of. They represent the oath, which 
ultimately confirmed the covenant with Abraham, as added, 
that " we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for 
refuge to the hope set before us ;" and describe the members 
of Christ's Church as having now come to Mount Zion, the city 
of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. 

Yes, and we may well thank God that it is so ; that the evi- 
dence on each side is so clear and decisive ; and that on the 
warrant of inspired prophecy going before, and an infallible 
interpretation coming after, we can assure ourselves of a per- 
sonal interest in all that was written in former revelations, 
without being obliged to grope our way between certain things 
that are for us, and certain other things with which we have 
no personal concern. All hangs harmoniously together. The 
same word that, as addressed to men of former generations, 
tells us of the way to a sonship condition, lays open at the same 
time the prospect of a sonship inheritance. And speaking as 
it does of things to come through the existing relations of those 
by whom it came — their territorial as well as personal and 
social relations — we may, and indeed ought to see in one and 
all of them alike, the hidden purpose of God's grace in its com- 
pleteness, struggling into light, and in the present and visible 
sphere of things giving open pledge and testimony of the glo- 
rious heritage of life and blessing, destined for those upon whom 
the ends of the world have come.* 

* On the grouud of these considerations we object to the division of the prophe- 
cies of the Old Testament into those of a simply temporal kind, which belonged to 
Abraham and his family ; and those of a spiritual kind, in which the people of God 
generally have an interest. Sherlock, in his "Discourses on Prophecy," exhibits 
this division. One portion, he says, " relates to the temporal state and condition 
of the Jews, and was in order to the administration and execution, on God's part, 



198 THE INTEll-CONNECTED AND 

We have hitherto spoken of the mutual inter-connection and 
progressive character of the prophetical writings together, the 
one as the natural result and sequel of the other. There might, 
however, be a connection without an actual progression. One 
prophecy might, in regard either to its subject or to the form 
of representation it employed, have a respect to, and even be 
in a sense dependent upon, an earlier prophecy. And, in so far 
as such may be the case, it must be proper to keep it in view 
as an important element in the interpretation of prophecy, 
since a later prophecy of that description, even when it does 
not add anything material to the earlier, and brings out no new 
aspect of the future, cannot fail to be of service in confirming 
or elucidating what has preceded. The reference in Zechariah, 
already noticed, to the prophecy of Isaiah, respecting the 
branch that was to spring out of the stem of David, would 
have been of value, (to say nothing of the intimation coupled 
with it of the priestly character of Him in whom it was to be 
realized,) were it only for the familiarity it bespeaks with the 
earlier prophecy, and the explanation it puts upon the term 
hranch^ as indicative of small beginnings, but such as were to 
grow to the greatest magnitude. 

The passages in which one prophet substantially adopts the 
representation, or quotes the language of another, are of con- 
siderable number and variety. We can only refer to a few of 

of the temporal government given to Abraham and his natural descendants. These 
prophecies, relating to the things of this life, concern us but little ; but there are 
others in which we are highly concerned," etc. But Davison carries out this 
division more formally. He regards prophecy as taking, from the call of Abraham, 
a double course ; falling into two distinct lines, " one of them exclusive and par- 
ticular to his family; the other extending to all the nations of the earth." He 
holds the two to "be exceedingly distinct in their extent and in their kind, and 
their distinction was marked from the beginning." (P. 83.) We take this to be a 
superficial view of the matter. The outward and temporal did not exist by itself, 
but for the higher spiritual things connected with it, and as the necessary means 
for securing their attainment. To separate such things which God has bound so 
closely together, and draw a broad line of demarkation between them, is false in 
principle, and sure to lead to erroneous results. If believers in Christ are Abra- 
ham's children, and heirs according to his promise, they are assuredly interested in 
all that was said or promised to him. And the outward and temporal can never 
stand alone ; rightly considered, it will be seen to have a spiritual element pervad- 
ing and animating it. 



PEOGKESSIVE CHARACTER OF PROPHECY. 199 

the more obvious examples. Thus in Isa. ii, 1-4, we have, 
with only a few verbal differences, the same prediction respect- 
ing the exaltation of the house of the Lord in the latter days, 
and the general resort of the nations to it, that occurs in Micah 
iv, 1-3 ; the ideas, the language, the structure of the periods 
are so nearly alike, that there can be no doubt of the one hav- 
ing given rise to the other ; and there are pretty strong grounds 
for the conclusion that it appeared first in the prophecies of 
Micah. The prophecies of Balaam, as they refer more than 
once to earlier predictions, so are they again among those most 
frequently referred to and quoted in subsequent prophecies. 
Micahj for example, distinctly points to them in chap, vi, 5, 
and calls upon the people to remember them. Habakkuk at 
chap, i, 3, " "Why dost thou show me iniquity, and cause me tO' 
behold violence?" and again at verse 13, "Thou art of purer 
eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on evil," evidently 
uses language derived from I^um. xxiii, 21, where Balaam 
speaks of God as " not beholding iniquity in Jacob, nor seeing 
perverseness in Israel." Balaam had said (IN^um. xxiv, 17) of 
the star that was to arise out of Jacob, that " He should smite 
the corners of Moab, and destroy all the children of Sheth ; " 
and Jeremiah (xlviii, 45) says, " a flame shall devour the cor- 
ner of Moab, and the crown of the head of the children of 
noise;" partly quoting the forme words, and by a slight 
change (much slighter than the translation might seem to im- 
ply,) giving the meaning more distinctly of the rest : the chil- 
dren of Sheth in Balaam becoming the childi'en of noise or 
tumult in Jeremiah. There are many similar examples in Jer- 
emiah, who, more than any of the prophets, adopts the lan- 
guage of his predecessors ; thus in chap, xvii, 8, his description 
of the man whose hope is in the Lord, (" He shall be as a tree 
planted by the waters, and spreadeth out her roots by the river, 
and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be 
green,") is very much an adoption with some amplifications of 
the Psalmist's description of the righteous in the first Psalm ; 
and the prophecy in Jer. xlix, 7-32, of Edom, is in many parts 
the same with what is found in Obadiah, or differs from it only 
in unimportant particulars. Obadiah had said, " The pride of 



200 THE INTER-CONNECTED AND 

thine lieart liatli deceived thee, thou that dwellest in the clefts 
of the rock, whose habitation is high ; that saith in his heart, 
"Who shall bring me to the ground ? Though thou exalt thy- 
self as the eagle, and though thou set thj nest among the stars, 
thence will I bring thee down saith the Lord." Jeremiah 
says, " Thy terribkness hath deceived thee, the pride of thine 
heart, O thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rock, that bold- 
est the height of the liill ; though thou shouldest make thy nest 
as high as the eagle, I will bring thee down from thence, saith 
the Lord." Several other specimens might be given from the 
same prophecies. And Obadiah, who here is followed, him- 
self also follows Joel in various expressions ; as when he says, 
" They have cast lots upon Jerusalem," (verse 11,) while Joel 
had said, " They cast lots upon my people," (chap, iii, 3 ;) or, 
" Thy reward shall return upon thine own head," (verse 15,) 
and " Upon Mount Zion shall be deliverance, (verse 17,) where 
the words are in each case taken from Joel, chaps, iii, 4, 7 ; ii, 32. 
But it is needless to multiply examples further. 

ISTow at first thought, such appropriations by one prophet of 
the words and ideas of another, may seem scarcely to consist 
with the raised and elevated condition of those who saw the 
vision of G-od, and spake as they were moved by the Holy 
Ghost. It may seem to throw around such portions of the pro- 
phetic word an appearance of art and labor, and exhibit them 
in a dangerous resemblance to the productions in human liter- 
ature of those who endeavor to make up for the want of orig- 
inal genius, by availing themselves of the ideas and expressions 
of more gifted intellects. Such actually has been the inter- 
pretation sometimes put upon the matter. And yet, that it is 
manifestly not the right one, is evident from the order in 
which the citations and references by one prophet from another 
appear in the examples we have adduced. If an Isaiah could 
take from a Micah, a Habakkuk from a Balaam, a Jere- 
miah from an Obadiah, it is clear that some other principle 
must be sought to account for the dependence than any na- 
tive inferiority of mental powers, or the decay of prophetic 
gifts. 

In the way of explanation it must be remembered that the 



I 



PEOGRESSIVE CHARACTER OF PROPHECY. 201 

revelations of the prophets, if not formally given over, like the 
Psalms of David, to persons charged with the service of God 
in the sanctuary, were usually made public as soon as they 
were received, and added to the existing testimony of God. 
They forthwith became part of the sacred treasury of the 
Church ; and formed not only as to the thoughts expressed in 
them a portion of revealed truth, but also as to the very terms 
employed, a kind of hallowed tongue, in which to give expres- 
sion to such thoughts, when they might again present them- 
selves for utterance. May we not appeal in support of this to 
experience ? When one is really and in the proper sense full 
of the Holy Ghost, do not his thoughts, instinctively as it were, 
run in scriptural channels, and clothe themselves when he 
speaks, in the very language of inspiration ? The more power- 
fully the Spirit works within, originating spiritual thoughts and 
feelings, the more readily do they always take this scriptural 
direction ; as appears on the day of Pentecost itself in the ad- 
dress of the Apostle Peter, which is full of Old Testament 
quotations ; and shortly after, when escaping from the hand of 
violence and filled with the Holy Ghost, the apostles poured 
forth their hearts to God with one accord, in the very words that 
had been indited centuries before by the pen of David. (Acts 
iv, 23-27.) In like manner the Apostle Paul, who had the high- 
est gifts of the Spirit, and spoke of the things of God " in the 
words w^hich were taught by the Holy Ghost," ever makes the 
freest use of the earlier Scriptures, and sometimes, as when en- 
joining the duty of forgiveness, contents himself with reiterat- 
ing the testimony of former times (Kom. xii, 19-21.) And 
how often does the Apostle Peter, throughout his first epistle, 
address to the New Testament Church, as from himself, pas- 
sages that were originally addressed by other servants of God 
to the Church of the Old Testament ? Yet such passages are 
as much the communications of the Holy Spirit on their 
second as they were on their first appearance ; for the pur- 
pose of God required that a fresh utterance should be 
given to the sentiments they expressed, and the original form 
of expression was, on many accounts, the best that could be 
chosen. 



202 THE INTEE-CONNECTED AKD 

Besides, tliere were ends of a more special kind to be served 
by the references and quotations from one prophet to another. 
For these were like so many sign-marks along the line of 
ancient prophecy, indicating the relation of one portion to 
another ; formal and specific authentications in the chain of 
God's testimony, connecting the earlier with the later, certify- 
ing the existence of the earlier, and confirming anew or 
incidentally throwing light on its import. " The Old Testa- 
ment prophets," says Caspari, "form a regular succession; 
they are members of an unbroken continuous chain ; one per- 
petually reaches forth the hand to another. The later proph- 
ets had always either heard or read the prophecies of the ear- 
lier, and had these deeply impressed upon their minds. When, 
therefore, the Spirit of God came upon a prophet and irresist- 
ibly impelled him to prophecy, (Amos iii, 8,) it naturally hap- 
pened first that here and there, sometimes more, sometimes 
less, he clothed what the Spirit imparted to him in the words 
of one or other of the prophets he had heard or read; the 
words of his prophetical forerunner thus cleaving to his mem- 
ory and forming part of the materials of utterance of which 
the Spirit availed himself; and second, that the later prophet 
attached himself to the prophetical views of the earlier, and in 
the power of the prophetic Spirit, which descended on him 
from above and wrought in Hs soul, either confirmed them 
anew by a fresh promulgation, or expanded and completed 
them. For the most part, the coincidence in thought and 
expression is found united in the prophets." * 

Delitzsch, the friend and coadjutor of Caspari, has followed 
up this line of remark by similar observations in his introduc- 
tion to the third chapter of the Prophet Habakkuk ; a chapter 
which is not less distinguished by the vein of originality that 
pervades it, than by the free use which is made in it of some 
of the earlier portions of Scripture, especially of Psalm Ixxvii. 
" With the inspired penman in general," he says, " and with 
the prophet in particular, simply from his being a living 
member of the spiritual body, there was formed an internal 
storehouse out of the substance of former revelations which 

* Der Prophet Obadiah, Ausgelegt Yon Carl Paul Caspari, pp. 21, 22. 



PEOGRESSIVE CHARACTER OF PROPHECY. 203 

had entered into the very core of his spiritual life, and become 
amalgamated with it ; revelations which smik so deep into the 
memory and the heart of every pious Israelite, that he neces- 
sarily acted under their influence in the formation of his 
thoughts, and when writing also, could not avoid making use 
of the older expressions which already bore upon them a 
divine impress. Besides, the prophet could not otherwise be 
the organ and bearer of a divine revelation than by sacrificing 
everything of a selfish kind, therefore all ambitious strivings 
after originality, that he might surrender himself to the opera- 
tion of God; and this operation was partly of a mediate 
nature, through the work which had already been produced, 
and partly immediate^ yet even then connecting itself closely 
with the existing word. The conformity of the new, which 
germinated in the mind of the prophet with the old which 
had been imported into his mind, was necessitated alone by 
the circumstance that the revelation, in its organic develop- 
ment, could only present the aspect of something new, in so 
far as it took up the old, in order to confirm and still further 
unfold it, without the possibility, in the process of develop- 
ment which proceeds from God himself, the Unchangeable, 
of running into contrariety with what had preceded. This 
unison is the very seal of a divine revelation, as the work of 
one and the same Spirit operating in the workshops of many 
individuals." * 

On the whole, then, this mutual inter-connection and 
dependence apparent in the prophetical writings was of 
importance as an appropriate evidence and seal of the one- 
ness of the pervading Spirit, of the brotherhood of the 
prophetical order in faith and love, of the advancing, yet 
ever-renewing light of the prophetical testimony, and we 
may add, of the genuineness and authenticity of its several 
parts. The prophets were not rendered less human in their 
manner of thought and utterance, that they were supernat- 
urally moved by the Holy Spirit ; they thought as men, they 
spake as men ; and the use they thus made successively of 
each other's writings is a mark of verisimilitude on them as 

* Der Prophet Habakkuk, Ausgelegt von F. Delitzsch, p. 118. 



204 PROGRESSIVE CHARACTER OF PROPHECY. 

writings, a concealed attestation of their having been pro- 
duced and published at the proper time, and a satisfactory 
indication as to the place they relatively and respectively 
occupied in the prophetic chain. It is an element that has 
most effectually withstood the rationalistic alchemy, and 
materially contributed to the defense of the integrity of the 
prophetical writings. 



PART 11. 

APPLICATION" OF PRINCIPLES TO PAST AKD PRO- 
SPECTIVE FULFILLMENTS OF PROPHECY. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE APOLOGETIC VALUE OF PROPHECY, OR ITS PLACE AND 

USE AS AN EVIDENCE FOR THE FACTS AND 

DOCTRINES OF SCRIPTURE. 

There are three points that ought especially to be borne in 
mind, when prophecy is considered as an evidence and brought 
to bear on the controversy we have to maintain with the assail- 
ants of the Bible. The first is, that as it is prophecy in its 
predictive character alone that is here made account of, this, 
it should be remembered, was only a branch, and not more 
than a subsidiary branch of its revelations. We refer for the 
proof and grounds of the statement to the first chapter of the 
former part, and to the further elucidations given respecting 
it in chapter third. But assuming the position now as a cor- 
rect one, it were in itself wrong, and fitted to beget mistaken 
apprehensions on the subje.ct, to conduct the argument from 
prophecy, as if the whole value of prophecy depended upon 
the number and clearness of its announcements of the future. 
This has been too often done in the past, and material injustice 
has in consequence been inflicted on the interests of revealed 
truth. 

A second consideration, which was also brought out in the 
earlier part of our inquiries, (chap, iii,) has respect to the more 
immediate design and function of prophecy. Its proper sphere 
is the Church rather than the world ; and the primary end for 
which its communications were given, was to direct and com- 



206 THE APOLOGETIC VALUE OF PEOPHECY, ETC. 

fort the children of faith, more especially in their seasons of 
greater darkness and perplexity. Of necessity, therefore, 
those who stand altogether without the region of faith mnst 
be in an unfavorable position for appreciating or even for dis- 
tinctly understanding a large portion of the prophetical vol- 
ume. It is only some of the broader features and more salient 
points of the subject that can with any advantage be pre- 
sented to them. We are obliged to act in the matter like per- 
sons who stand outside ; looking as from a distance on the 
exterior of the sacred building, and pointing to such propor- 
tions and adjustments as are too conspicuous to be overlooked, 
or altogether denied ; but are not in a condition to enter in, 
and take cognizance of the finer, the more profound, and 
far-reaching harmonies which pervade the internal frame- 
work. 

There is still another point which must be taken into ac- 
count : in itself when duly considered a source of great strength, 
but one that must also be attended with some disadvantage in 
conducting an argument with adversaries of the faith. In 
dealing with such persons it is necessary, for the most part, to 
single out and press specific points, instead of surveying the 
matter in its proper compass and completeness. ^Now, the 
evidence of prophecy is essentially of a connected and cumula- 
tive nature. It does not consist so much in the verifications 
given to a few remarkable predictions, as in the establishment 
of an entire series closely related to each other, and forming a 
united and comprehensive whole. This is peculiarly the case 
in respect to the prophecies which relate to the person and 
kingdom of Messiah, which more than any others form a pro- 
longed and connected series. Hence, to use the words of 
Bishop Hurd, " though the evidence be but small from the 
completion of any one prophecy, taken separately, the amount 
of the whole evidence, resulting from a great number of proph- 
ecies,, all relative to the same design, may be considerable; 
like many scattered rays which, though each be weak in itself, 
yet concentered into one point, shall form a strong light, and 
strike the sense very powerfully." * 

* "Sermons on Prophecy," p. 86. 



THE APOLOGETIC VALUE OF PROPHECY, ETC. 207 

Any one may see, on a moment's reflection, liow great a 
difference this serial and connected character of Old Testament 
prophecy forms, in an argumentative respect, between it and 
the isolated, occasionally happy prognostications of uninspired 
men. The difference is such as to secure for the argument 
founded on the fulfillment of scriptural prophecy a conclusive 
force, if it is fully entered into and fairly dealt with ; while, if 
looked at only in broken fragments, the distance cannot possi- 
bly appear so great as it would otherwise do between them and 
some of the more fortunate specimens of human augury. Even 
however with this disadvantage, the prophecies of Scripture 
will be found to have characteristics belonging to them which 
such specimens fail to exhibit. The two most noted examples 
of the class that used to be brought, and in the present day are 
still brought into competition with the predictions of the Bible, 
are taken from ancient Roman authors. One is the saying of 
a Boman augur, Yettius Yalens, reported by Yarro in his 
eighteenth Book of Antiquities : If it was true as historians 
related, (si ita esset, ut traderent historici,) that twelve vultures 
had appeared to Bomulus at the founding of the city of Rome, 
then, since the Roman people had survived for one hundred and 
twenty years, they would prolong their existence to twelve 
hundred years. And the other occurs in Seneca's Medea, 
where it is said, a time should come when the ocean would relax 
the cords by which the world was then bound, and new regions 
of the earth come to be explored ; when Thule [Shetland] would 
cease to be the remotest boundary of the known world.* 

Now, in regard to both of these vaunted prophecies, there 
is no need, with Hurd, to press on the other side the serial and 
compact nature of the prophecies of Scripture. By doing so, 
indeed, we might place those of Scripture at a much greater 
and more conspicuous elevation above them. But, in truth, 
they cannot stand a comparison even with some of the earlier 

* Venient annis 
Saecula scris, quibus oceanus 
Vincula rerum laxet, et ingens 
Pateat tellus, Tiphysque novoa 
Detegat orbes ; nee sit terris 
Ultima Thule. 



208 THE APOLOGETIC VALUE OF PROPHECY, ETC. 

and less specific announcements of scriptural prophecy. Bishop 
Horsley has tested that of Seneca with the prophecy of JSToah, 
in respect to the relative fortunes of his posterity, and shown 
the immeasurable superiority of the patriarch's insight into the 
future above that displayed by the Roman sage. General and 
comprehensive as Noah's prediction is, it still comprises par- 
ticulars which were capable of meeting as well with a marked 
contradiction as with a distinct verification in the course of 
Providence, since it so expressly, and in perfect accordance 
with the results of history, ascribes to Shem's line the superi- 
ority in respect to the knowledge and worship of Jehovah, to 
Japhet's the superiority in respect to extensive propagation 
and active energy, and to Ham's the bad pre-eminence of 
degradation and servitude. It is easy to conceive how, in 
many respects, the course of events might have travestied this 
prospective distribution, instead of presenting, as it has done, 
a remarkable confirmation of it. But, in regard to Seneca's 
augury, which has no doubt received a sort of fulfillment, it 
really predicts nothing but what might with confidence have 
been anticipated from the history of the past. There had 
already, within the period to which authentic tradition reached 
back, been a great enlargement of men's geographical knowl- 
edge ; many discoveries had been made of new territories both 
by sea and land ; and as it was certain that a vast extent of 
ocean still remained to be explored, nothing was more likely 
to occur to an imaginative mind than that in process of time 
further additions would yet be made to the ascertained bound- 
aries of the habitable globe. But beside this natural inference 
all is vague and general. " ^Neither the parts of the world are 
specified from which expeditions of discovery should be fitted 
out, nor the quarters in which they should most succeed ; or, 
if any intimation upon the latter article be couched in the men- 
tion of Shetland, as an island that should cease to be extreme, 
it is erroneous, as it points precisely to that quarter of the 
globe where discovery has ever been at a stand — ^where the 
ocean to this hour opposes his eternal barrier of impervious 
unnavigable ice." * 

* Horsley's Works, i, p. 256. 



THE APOLOGETIC VALUE OF PROPHECY, ETC. 209 

It fares still worse with the other prediction, the ancient 
oracle of Yettins. His prognostication from the number and 
appearance of the vultures did not even profess to have more 
than a possibility for its foundation : " If it was so," he said, 
"as historians related." But every one knows now that, like 
other things respecting Homulus and Remus, the story about 
the vultures is not so properly the account which historians 
related as the legends which poets sung ; it was altogether of a 
fabulous character, and the prediction hazarded on it could be 
nothing more than a fortunate guess. It appears, indeed, in 
the form of a calculation. If the Roman people have survived 
one hundred and twenty years — that is, twelve times ten — then 
they shall do so ten times that again — twelve hundred years. 
But why this longer period ? They certainly did survive so 
long ; but we can see no probable gromids for the anticipation, 
none for that precise period any more than others that might 
be named. 

We have, as we shall presently see, greatly more specific 
predictions in Scripture than either of those heathen oracles — 
predictions which are not based upon any conjectural hypoth- 
esis, and far too discriminating to have been framed merely 
by shrewd inference and deduction from the history of the past. 
But were they less so than they really are, when taken indi- 
vidually, it is not to be forgotten that their immense number and 
connected order, as related to a great scheme, and pointing to 
a definite end, forms their peculiar distinction, and renders the 
argument deducible from them one of an exceedingly varied 
and cumulative nature. If it might be excepted against cer- 
tain portions of the chain that they did not afford conclusive 
evidence of supernatural foresight and divine interposition, the 
whole surely cannot be so accounted for. And, besides, even 
when taken in its full compass and connection, prophecy, it 
must be remembered, with its manifold accomplishments, is 
still but one branch of the Christian evidence. So far from 
having the whole weight to bear alone, there are several others 
equally important to be coupled with it — the miracles of the 
Gospel, the originality of Christ's character and scheme, the 

sincere and self-sacrificing spirit of liis apostles, the sublime 

14 



210 THE APOLOGETIC VALUE OF PROPHECY^ ETC. 

morality of their teaching, with its profound adaptation to the 
wants and emotions of man's moral nature, and the blessed 
results it has accomplished in the world. All must be taken 
together ; they are so many distinct but converging lines ; and 
it is the combined force and operation of the whole, not the 
strength merely of a particular part, which must decide the 
claim of Scripture to be received as the authoritative revelation 
of God to men. 

"We must, however, quit these general considerations, and by 
a selection of particular examples show how the argument from 
prophecy may be most advantageously conducted. Dealing 
with the subject as it may be best fitted to tell upon the under- 
standing and convictions of those who are enveloped in doubt 
or unbelief, our position should be chosen at a point where the 
ground is comparatively clear as to the main question, and no 
preliminary difficulties can be raised, or brooding suspicions 
entertained, regarding the possible occurrence of the events 
that fulfilled, before the utterance of the prophecies that fore- 
told them. The interval between the prophecy and its fulfill- 
ment should be such as to leave no proper room to doubt that 
the one had been spoken and recorded before the other had 
come into operation. On this account many of the most explicit 
prophecies, whose deliverance and fulfillment are recorded in 
the same book, should be passed over in the first instance ; as 
in the case of such, the adversary is ready with the reply, that 
he doubts the formal existence of the predictions till after the 
events themselves had taken place. We may, therefore, fix 
upon the period about or immediately subsequent to the Baby- 
lonish captivity, when most of the prophetical writings were 
certainly in existence ; but as some, not even avowed adver- 
saries, are still disposed to except portions of Daniel, and to 
regard them as the productions of a still later period, however 
groundless the suspicion is, the consideration of such portions 
had better be postponed till others are disposed of. 



THE APOLOGETIC VALUE OF PKOPHECY, ETC. 211 



SECTION I. 

PHOPHECIES ON THE STATES AND KINGDOMS WHICH CAME INTO 

CONTACT WITH ISRAEL. 

Opening Old Testament Scripture, then, as it unquestionably 
stood at the period referred to, we would ask the person on 
whom we seek to make some impression by the argument from 
prophecy to note what is written there of the surrounding 
states and kingdoms, that either then stood or had lately been 
standing in an attitude of rivalry and opposition to the cove- 
nant-people. However it may have happened, the fact is 
palpable and notorious that feelings of enmity existed, and pro- 
ceedings of hostility had been carried on between Israel and 
those heathen neighbors, not however without alternations of 
close intimacy and fraternal alliances, though on God's part 
expressly forbidden. ]N^or is the fact less palpable and notori- 
ous, that in the prophetic word a doom was pronounced against 
one and all of those surrounding states ; and that although they 
respectively occupied very different positions in rank and power, 
and also inhabited very different territories. There were the 
smaller tribes of the Moabites, the Ammonites, and the Philis- 
tines ; the bitterly inimical, and, even after the Babylonian era, 
still powerful Edomites ; the enterprising and flourishing com- 
munity of Tyre, who had the maritime commerce of the world 
at their command, and whose ships frequented every harbor 
of the ancient world ; Egypt with her hereditary renown, her 
natural and acquired resources, and still almost unsullied glory ; 
and towering proudly above all, Babylon with her enormous 
walls and lofty battlements, her advantageous situation and 
treasures past reckoning, the seat, when the prophecies respect- 
ing her were uttered, of a mighty empii'e, and though subject 
to the Medo-Persian sway at the time when the Jewish exiles 
returned to Judea, yet wanting little in appearance of her 
former magnificence, and not unlikely to assert again her inde- 
pendence, or become under her new masters the center of as 
extensive and powerful a dominion as she had ever wielded. 



212 THE APOLOGETIC VALUE OF PKOPHECY, ETC. 

Sucli were the states and kingdoms that surrounded the cove- 
nant-people, and against one and all of which, because of their 
ambitious rivalry, or ungodly and spiteful opposition toward 
the kingdom which God had set up for the homage and bless- 
ing of the nations, prophecy uttered a doom of judgment. So 
far the doom was uniform ; that all, as powers possessing or 
aspiring to dominion in the earth, should be brought down, 
and be made monuments of ruin. But at the same time there 
was considerable variety in the language employed ; the pre- 
dictions are by no means indiscriminate denunciations of com- 
ing evil ; the form and extent of the evil announced varies, and 
with the evil there sometimes also intermingles the prospect 
of spiritual good. Thus, in the twenty-third chapter of Isaiah, 
after the most express intimation of the coming downfall of 
Tyre, it is added, at verse 18, that she should again recover 
from that first overthrow, and that '^ her merchandise and her 
liire should be holiness to the Lord ;" and in chapter xix, 18-25, 
of the same prophet, a participation in spiritual blessings is 
distinctly promised in respect to Egypt and Assyria ; the Lord 
was to smite and again to heal ; Egypt and Assyria were to 
derive benefit from Israel ; so that it might even come to be 
said, " Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of 
my hands, and Israel mine inheritance." Yet with all this 
diversity, both as regards the measure of calamity in the threat- 
ened doom and the prospect of spiritual good occasionally inter- 
mingling with the announcement of natural evil, it is declared 
with one voice by the ancient prophets respecting all those 
states and kingdoms, that their power and political existence 
should be utterly destroyed ; they should, in that respect, be- 
come a desolation ; but with a marked exception in the case of 
Egypt, which was merely to sink into irrecoverable meanness 
and degradation. (Ezek. xxix, 15, etc.) 

JSTow, looking at these prophetic utterances in this general 
light, and with respect to the more obvious results contem- 
plated in them, as the import of the prophecies is plain, so the 
fulfillment of them is certain. There can scarcely be said to 
be any room for doubt either way. I^ot was there anything 
in the political aspect of the times, or in the natural position 



THE APOLOGETIC VALUE OF PEOPHECY, ETC. 213 

of affairs, whicli could in each case liave warranted the prog- 
nostication of such striking results. It might possibly have 
been conjectured without any superhuman insight that the 
lesser states, such as the Philistines, the Moabites, the Am- 
monites, should in process of time be extinguished by the great 
empires which were then contending for the mastery of the 
world, or become merged into the wandering tribes of the 
desert. But what natural sagacity could have foreseen that 
the Edomites, who continued comparatively strong and vigor- 
ous beyond the period that the prophecies respecting them were 
written, and who retained possession of their territory wlien 
Judea was laid waste, should yet become more desolate than 
their Jewish rivals, nay, should entirely cease to have a politi- 
cal existence, and should do so from their being swallowed up 
by the revived might and energy of Israel ? This is the singu- 
lar turn of affairs that was predicted as to the relative position 
of the two peoples : " Upon Mount Zion shall be deliverance, 
and there shall be holiness ; and the house of Jacob shall pos- 
sess their possessions. And the house of Jacob shall be a fire, 
and the house of Joseph a flame, and the house of Esau for 
stubble, and they shall kindle in them and devour them ; and 
there shall not be any remaining of the house of Esau ; for the 
Lord hath spoken it." Obad. verses 17, 18 ; Ezek. xxv, 14.) The 
meaning plainly is, that the Edomites should cease to be a 
separate kingdom ; their name and memorial as such should 
perish ; and as this was to come upon them specially on account 
of their vengeful hatred toward the children of Israel, so, to 
mark more distinctly the divine retribution, the Lord was to 
"lay his vengeance upon Edom by the hand of his people 
Israel ;" other instruments of judgment might be employed, 
but this was to be the one that should actually effect the work 
of their national destruction. And so it was, though not till 
about a century and a half before the Cliristian era. Instru- 
ments of desolation had begun to work at a much earlier period ; 
for even Malachi could speak of their having been impoverished 
and greatly decayed, though still existing as a separate people, 
(chapter i, 3, 4 ;) but in the time of the Maccabees, John llyr- 
canus so completely subdued them, that he gave them the 



214: THE APOLOGETIC VALUE OF PEOPHECY, ETC. 

alternative of entirely abandoning their country, (which then 
lay immediately to the south of Palestine, and even included 
part of ancient Judea,) or submitting to the rite of circumcision 
and conforming to the laws of Moses. They embraced the 
latter alternative, and so, as Josephus says, " They were hence- 
forth no other than Jews." ^ Their national distinction was 
gone ; their political existence and their heritage had alike 
perished ; and in such a manner as to render but the more con- 
spicuous the nobler rank and destiny of Israel. Was there 
not here the manifest signature of the eye and the finger of 
Omniscience ? 

The case of Babylon is, if possible, a still more striking evi- 
dence. What merely human foresight could have descried the 
utter ruin and prostration of such a city ? At the time the 
prophecies were written, she was in the noontide of her glory ; 
and her natural situation was such as might seem to betoken a 
perpetual continuance of prosperity. Even in the time of 
Herodotus, who visited the city and neighborhood some genera- 
tions after the prophecies were delivered, a full century after 
the first conquest of it by the Persians, there was everything, 
to hmnan appearance, that w^as calculated to secure for it a 
continued prosperity and greatness. The city was still the 
most populous and magnificent of the world, and might be 
said to have changed its masters rather than its condition ; for 
the Persian monarchs were wont to spend several months of 
the year in it. And the region in which it was situated, the 
province of Babylonia, was so exceedingly rich and fertile that 
it supported the king of Persia, his army, and his whole estab- 
lishment for four months of the year ; in other words, it con- 
tributed one third of the entire revenue of the kingdom. Yet 
the Spirit of prophecy which guided the sacred penmen per- 
ceived in the first blow that was struck by the victorious Per- 

* Antiq., xiii, 9, 1. Such also is the testimony of the grammarian Ammonias, as 
quoted by Prideaux, An. 129, '"The Idumeans were not Jews from the beginning, 
but Plioenicians and Syrians ; but being afterward subdued by the Jews, and com- 
pelled to be circumcised, and unite into one nation, and be subject to the same 
laws, they were called Jews." To the like eflect also Dio, lib. xxxvi, " That coun- 
try is also called Judea, and the people Jews ; and this name is given also to aa 
many others as embrace their religion, though of other nations." 



THE APOLOGETIC VALUE OF PROPHECY, ETC. 215 

sians the infliction of a mortal wound; they declared it to be 
the commencement of a complete and total ruin. Centuries 
elapsed in the process, but the destined consummation traveled 
on. Against all present appearances, in spite of every natural 
advantage, and notwithstanding repeated efforts on a gigantic 
scale to turn back the tide of evil, the work of deterioration 
still proceeded. The civilization, commerce, wealth, and do- 
minion of the world took another direction, and Babylon con- 
tinued to sink till nothing remained of all her glory but empti- 
ness and desolation. Does not this again, we ask, bespeak the 
eye and finger of Omniscience ? 

The foresight displayed is scarcely less remarkable wh-en we 
look to what was written of a nearer neighbor of Israel, the 
commercial and enterprising community of Tyre. That this 
wonderful state, the growth of centuries — grown till she had 
become sole mistress of the seas — should be destined to fall, 
should become a spoil to the nations, should even sink so low 
that her harbors would be forsaken, and she should become a 
place for the spreading of nets in the midst of the sea, (Ezek. 
xxvi ;) this, especially when contrasted with the glorious things 
that were spoken of the little kingdom of Judah, by her side, 
was anything but what might on natural grounds have been 
expected. Her insular situation, itself a citadel of strength ; 
her want of local territory, and comparatively small resident 
population, fitted, one might have thought, to exempt her from 
the cupidity and violence of ambitious conquerors ; her peace- 
ful and busy commerce, together with her numerous and flour- 
ishing colonies, each serving to unite her as by a bond of con- 
cord with the nations of the earth ; all seemed to bespeak for 
her a prolonged existence, and at least, to form a protection 
against the worst calamities. Yet here, also, the word of God 
stands fast. The thirst for conquest, first in ^Nebuchadnezzar 
afterward in Alexander the Great, could not brook the 
thought of such a state continuing independent, and holding- 
treasures over which they had no control. The blow was once 
and again struck with fatal success ; and though centuries had 
to roll on before the judgment of heaven ran its course, it did 
not fail to proceed. The commerce of the world found for 



216 THE APOLOGETIC VALUE OF PROPHECY, ETC. 

itself otlier cliannels, and Tyre at length ceased, ceased for- 
ever, to hold a place among the communities of the earth. 

But why should the same not have been predicted of Egypt ? 
"Why only a perpetual depression in the one case, and a total 
subversion in the other? Egypt was not, according to the 
delineations of prophecy, to become so thoroughly extinct in its 
national power and resources as Tyre and Babylon. It was 
not to be made perpetual desolations, but to be brought down 
from its supremacy, to lose its ancient prestige, to be hmnbled, 
and made to serve, and rendered base among the nations — 
which, indeed, as compared with what Egypt from of old had 
claimed to be, and still in a great degree was when the proph- 
ets wrote, indicated an entire revolution and change in the 
relative position of the earthly kingdoms. We need scarcely 
say that this also has happened. The land of the Pharaohs 
has never lost its fertility ; its natural capacities to this day 
are great, though but imperfectly developed; yet from the 
period of the Persian conquest it has never regained its inde- 
pendence as a nation. Degradation and servility have been 
stamped upon its condition for more than twenty centuries ; 
and beyond all doubt, its ancient assumption of the highest 
place of honor and pretentious rivalry with the kingdom of 
God have irrecoverably gone. 

Whichever way we look, therefore, among those ancient 
states and kingdoms that lay around the covenant-people, we 
see that the things written concerning them in the prophecies 
of the Old Testament hold good ahke in what was common to 
all the communities spoken of, and what was peculiar to some. 
And we should conceive it impossible for any one really open 
to conviction, carefully comparing this class of prophecies with 
their fulfillment, without having the impression forced on him 
that the prophets in what they thus wrote were supernaturally 
led by the Spirit of God. But there are persons, it is well to 
remember, who are not properly open to conviction, and who 
have preconceived notions, which tend effectually to prevent a 
fair and candid examination of the subject. In this position 
certainly are those who, on general grounds, deny the reality 
of all supernatural interference with the affairs of men ; every- 



THE APOLOGETIC VALUE OF PEOPHECY, ETC. 217 

thing of this sort is against their " theory of providence," which 
makes account only of physical agencies and mechanical laws ; 
and therefore prophecy, as implying a supernatural insight 
into the future, is concluded to be an impossibility. Persons 
of this philosophical creed, however, usually couple with their 
denial of the prophetical element, in the scriptural sense, a 
kind of assertion of it in the natural. '^ Every department," 
they tell us, " of human knowledge and enterprise, has had its 
seers and prophets. What, in the first sense, was the ISTovum 
Organum of Bacon but a prophecy the most distinct, and 
which has been partially fulfilled in the present condition of 
science, and will no doubt be still further verified in its future 
fortunes? The deep political insight of Bonaparte enabled 
him to prophesy at St. Helena the destruction of the old Bour- 
bon dynasty, the succession of the Orleans branch, and the 
final establishment of a republic, events which have literally 
been accomphshed before our eyes.* Entirely original minds 
are so rare in the world, occurring only here and there in the 
lapse of centuries, that the frivolous and unthinking portion of 
mankind is apt to regard all true insight into nature as a 
miraculous gift. Each succeeding age has beheld the fulfill- 
ment of the prophecies of Bacon : ' Man gradually establishing 
his reign in the interpretation of nature.' " And then we have 
the case of Columbus, "the Genoese sailor, whose soul was 
burdened with a material vision," which spurred him on by its 
internal promptings till, in the face of gigantic difficulties, he 
fulfilled both it and the still older prophecy of Seneca ; and 
not only Columbus, but Wiclif also, and Luther, and Knox, 
were all, it turns out, seers who, " in prophetic vision, saw the 
great futurity of Protestantism that was to shake the founda- 
tions of human faith throughout the civilized world." f 

Such is Mr. Foxton's view of the matter. Sagacity, shrewd- 
ness, philosophic culture, genius — these, one and all, though in 

* This was written in 1849, when there was, during a brief interval, a republic 
in France ; but alas for its final establishment. Louis Napoleon soon dashed that 
chimera to the ground, and furnished a sad commentary on the deep insight dis- 
played in his uncle's prophecy. 

f Foxton's "Popular Christianity," p. 117, 8e!t[. 



218 THE APOLOGETIC VALUE OF PROPHECY, ETC. 

different degrees, enable their possessors to rise higher and see 
farther than other men ; and in so far as they do so, the result 
is a prophecy. That is, for the explanation amounts to no 
more, a degree of discernment is obtained, to which the same 
general name is applied as that by which we designate the pro- 
phetic announcements of Scripture. For anything beyond this 
we deny the relevancy of the explanation. It does not touch 
.the real points at issue, and as little accounts for the utterance 
of those definite and discriminating predictions regarding the 
countries around Judea as it does for the creation of the world. 
Persons who can see no essential difference between the two 
cases must be held either as taking a merely superficial view of 
the subject, or as incapable, from their mental state, of reason- 
ing soundly upon it. But assuredly they will need to produce 
other reasons than those contained in the vague and general 
assertions of Mr. Foxton, before they shall be able to convince 
plain and unsophisticated minds that Hebrew prophets, living 
at such a time, and with so little to aid them of a scientific 
nature, could have succeeded otherwise than through super- 
natural guidance to give forth predictions relating to events so 
unlikely at the period, so far distant in time, and of so diversi- 
fied a character. 

Others of the same school with the writer just referred to 
meet the argument drawn from such predictions by denying 
that they contained any definite and unambiguous announce- 
ment of coming events, or, that in so far as they did so, the 
predictions were as often falsified as confirmed by the event, 
therefore only at best shrewd anticipations or lucky hits. 
Such is the view more particularly dwelt on by Theodore 
Parker. The greater part of the prophecies were, according to 
his opinion, quite vague and indefinite. Some, however, were 
more precise ; and of these he thinks there may have b'een 
some, though he does not condescend to specify any, which 
might be regarded, like some of the oracles delivered from the 
tripod of Delphi, " extraordinarily felicitous ;" but he is quite 
sure there were others which proved false.* In the instances 
he alleges in proof of this statement, he shows no small degree 

* "Discourse of Religion," p. 20t. 



THE APOLOGETIC VALUE OF PROPHECY, ETC. 219 

of effrontery. The first is that of the seventy years' captivity 
predicted by Jeremiah, which he summarily pronounces to have 
failed, because the captivity was accomplished at three success- 
ive stages, and from neither of them does the period of the 
return make so much as seventy years. It would appear, 
therefore, that Theodore Parker is wiser than Daniel. He dis- 
covers a falsehood where Daniel perceived a truth ; or, as it 
will perhaps be more correct to put it, he is more hasty and 
superficial in his judgment, for Daniel, by careful search, found 
out the number of years which the prophecy required to run its 
course, while Mr. Parker snatches at some shallow chronology, 
for which not so much as a single authority is given, and by 
the aid of it leaps to his desired conclusion. It has been con- 
clusively settled, by the most rigid examination, that the period 
of seventy years' desolation and captivity dates from the first 
deportation of the captive Jews, (among whom were Daniel 
and his companions,) about the year 608 or 609 before Christ ; 
and the return took place about 536, making a period of full 
seventy years. 

A second alleged failure is found, with the same easy and 
flippant superficiality, in Ezekiel's prophecies regarding Tyre, 
in one of which, chapter xxvi, 7, seq., he predicts the capture of 
the city by ITebuchadnezzar ; while in another, chapter xxix, 
IT, seq., he represents Nebuchadnezzar as having served a great 
service against Tyre, but without getting any wages for it ; on 
which account Egypt was to be given him for a prey. After 
the example of several German rationalists, Parker understands 
this latter prediction as implying that ITebuchadnezzar had 
been obliged to raise the siege of Tyre, without being able to 
take the city ; so that the second prophecy is held to be an un- 
doubted evidence of the first having failed, or, rather of both 
being what he calls poetical odes, never intended to be taken 
literally. I have investigated this point at some length else- 
where,* and shall only state here that the view is altogether 
groundless ; that the second prophecy, which speaks of the 
wailt of recompense to the king of Babylon, by no means neces- 
sarily implies the defeat of his attempt to take the city, but 

* See "Cora, on Ezekiel," in loco. 



220 THE APOLOGETIC VALUE OF PROPHECY, ETC. 

only the comparative smallness of the treasure found in it ; that 
there is, however, the strongest historical evidence, altogether 
independent of Scripture, of Tyre having at this very time sunk 
to a position of inferiority, from which she never recovered, 
and which can only be explained on the ground of her subju- 
gation by IN^ebuchadnezzar. It is not, therefore, Ezekiel who 
is self-contradictory, but simply modern rationalists, who in 
their anxiety and haste to find blemishes in Scripture, have 
misinterpreted Ezekiel, and imperfectly studied history. 

These are the only specific cases, relating to Old Testament 
times, which are adduced by the writer above named to dis- 
parage the authority, and disprove the properly predictive char- 
acter of scriptural prophecy. They are really nothing to the 
purpose, and can only be characterized as arbitrary interpreta- 
tions, built on false assumptions."^ On the other side, the argu- 
ment founded on the remarkable fulfillments of prophecy, re- 
specting the states and kingdoms around Judea,"is never fairly 
looked at ; nor is the slightest attempt made by him or Foxton 
to show how either shrewdness or sagacity, philosophy or genius, 
might have enabled the Hebrew prophets to see so far into the 
natural tendencies of things, as to be able of themselves to light 
upon such wonderful prognostications of the future. Having, 
therefore, no other rational explanation of the matter offered, 
and being able to conceive of none that appears deserving of 
being entertained, we must rest in the conclusion that they 
were veritable prophecies, not coming by the will of man, but 
spoken by those who were supernaturally enlightened and 
moved by the Holy Ghost. It is, however, a conclusion which 
we could arrive at and rest in only on such principles of inter- 

* Since our first edition was published, the prediction of Amos respecting the 
house of David, in the time of Jeroboam II,, (chapter vii,) has been appealed to by 
Professor Jowett, ("Essays and Reviews," p. 343,) and is apparently also by 
Stanley viewed as a prophetic failure. (Smith's Diet, Art. "Jeroboam II.") Hit- 
zig had taken the same view before them. But there is no proper ground for it. 
The prophecy of Amos was uttered against the liouse of Jeroboam, which he de- 
clared should be slain by the sword ; this Amaziah, the priest at Bethel, construed 
into an assertion that Jeroboam himself should die by the sword ; perverting the 
words, much as the false witnesses at Jerusalem perverted those of Stephen. 
(Acts vi, 13, 14.) The prophecy, therefore, was not falsified by the circumstance 
that Jeroboam died in peace, for his house was soon cut off. 



THE APOLOGETIC YALUE OF PEOPHECY, ETC. 221 

pretation as we previously laid down respecting the style and 
diction of prophecy ; and if, with the extreme literalists, we 
were to insist on prophecy being understood and read like his- 
tory, we should feel constrained to say that the predictions we 
have been considering had been very imperfectly fulfilled. 

Let us take Edom as an example. In some of our popular 
works on prophecy, which proceed on the literalist principle, 
the prophecies concerning Edom are viewed as bearing respect 
merely to the land of Edom as if it was the territory alone, and 
not rather the people who occupied it, which the prophecies 
respected, and then with this application given to them, they 
are applied in the most prosaic manner to the country, as it 
exists in the present day. A double error ; for as the moral 
element in prophecy was always the main one, it is in the first 
instance the people that should be regarded as pointed at in 
the predictions, and the land only, in so far as its state might 
be a representation or an emblem of the condition of the 
people. It seems, therefore, somewhat beside the purpose, to 
look to the Arabia Petrsea of the present time, as of itself ful- 
filling what was spoken respecting Edom. For that region, it 
is known, had ceased to be the proper territory of the Edom- 
ites two or three centuries before the Christian era. At the 
time of the Babylonish captivity, the Edomites began to move 
more upward, spreading over the old country of the Moabites, 
and encroaching on the southern borders of the land of Judah ; 
while from the opposite quarter the E^abatheans, a different 
race, pressed in from the south upon Mount Seir, and became 
masters of the greater part of the old Edomite territory, includ- 
ing Petra, its rocky capital. The Grecian architecture which 
adorned Petra some time before and for a considerable period 
after the Christian era, and the ruins of which have been so 
often described, must have been the workmanship of the 
iN'abatheans, not of the Edomites ; for the latter had been sup- 
planted by the ISTabatheans before the Grecian influence and 
taste had diffused itself in the East. Its subsequent desola- 
tions had, therefore, no direct relation to the Edom of Scrip- 
ture ; and if these desolations, which reach to the present day, 
are at all taken into account, it should only be as affording a 



222 THE APOLOGETIC VALUE OF PROPHECY, ETC. 

collateral proof of the judgment that was to befall the children 
of Esau, and of their having signally failed to establish their 
ascendancy in the earth. But it is the desolations of an earlier 
period, and above all, the utter extinction of Edom as a people,, 
and that by the hand of Jacob, in which, as before remarked, 
the more direct and proper fulfillment of the predictions is to 
be sought. This, however, is but one error, and it is another, 
certainly not inferior, to seek in the present state of Arabia 
Petrgea for an exact and literal correspondence with the fervid, 
and in many respects figurative representations of prophecy 
respecting the doom of Edom. Such passages as those of Isa. 
xxxiv, 10, where it is said, " From generation to generation it 
shall lie waste, none shall pass through it for ever and ever ; " 
and of Ezek. xxxv, 7, " I will make Mount Seir most desolate, 
and cut ofi^ from it him that passeth out, and him that return- 
eth ; " such passages as these are quoted, and after appeals to 
the note of Yolney, " This country has not been visited by any 
traveler," and the difficulties experienced by Burckhardt, by 
Irby and Mangles, and other travelers in getting access to the 
region, the conclusion is drawn as certain, that " the prophecy 
must be literally understood and apphed." Sometimes even 
the rage for literalism is carried to the ridiculous extent of pal- 
pably violating the very rule it seeks to establish ; as when in 
proof of minute prophetical fulfillment, the cases of Seetzen 
and Burckhardt are exhibited, as of men who " passed through 
the land," indeed, but did not live " to return." Strange veri- 
fications, surely, of a prediction which foretold the cutting off 
of him that returned ! Is the cutting off which prevents men 
from returning, the literal accomplishment of a word which 
speaks of cutting off such as did return ? It were certainly a 
new species of literalism. And here lies the folly of dealing 
thus with such prophecies ; they fall to pieces in our hands. 
Persons have of late years often passed and repassed through 
the Idumean territory, and scarcely a year elapses without its 
being visited by travelers, and fresh accounts coming forth of 
what they witnessed. Even particular localities, such as the 
ascent of Mount Hor, which the cupidity of the Arabs rendered 
difficult or impracticable to earlier travelers, are now found 



THE APOLOGETIC VALUE OF PKOPHECY, ETC. 223 

perfectly accessible. Dean Stanley and his party in 1852-53, 
appear to liave met with no serious impediment in their 
course ; * and the facilities are constantly on the increase. 
But in truth, there has never been a total cessation of persons 
going and returning ; for the region has always been to some 
extent inhabited, and if not by European travelers, yet by 
Arab wanderers, it has in every age had its passing sojourners. 
The expression of the prophet Ezekiel was never meant to 
exclude this ; it is merely a proverbial phrase for general deso- 
lation, and as such is used by another prophet of the territory 
of the Israelites themselves. (Isa. Ix, 15.) It intimated that 
instead of being a powerful, flourishing, and prosperous com- 
munity, with persons on all sides flocking to it and returning 
from it, Edom was to be stricken with poverty and ruin : 
Edom, however, not simply nor chiefly as a land, but as a 
people. This was what the prophecy foretold, and it has been 
amply verified ; verified not the less that the " wadies are full 
of trees, and shrubs, and flowers, and the eastern and higher 
parts are extensively cultivated and yield good crops." f Still 
the Edom of prophecy, Edom considered as the enemy of God 
and the rival of Israel, has perished forever; all in that 
respect is an untrodden wilderness, a hopeless ruin ; and tliere 
the veracity of God's word finds its justification. 

It is scarcely possible, one would imagine, for any person to 
read, with an unbiased mind, the prophecies we have been 
more particularly considering, without perceiving that the 
poetical element enters largely into their composition, and that 
Edom often appears in them as the representative and head of 
a class. In the latter stages of the history of Israel, the 
Edomites surpassed all their enemies in keenness and intensity 
of malice ; and hence they naturally came to be viewed by the 
Spirit of prophecy as the personification of that godless malig- 
nity and pride, which would be satisfied with nothing short of 
the utter extermination of the cause of God ; the heads and 
representatives of the whole army of the aliens, whose doom 
was to carry along with it the downfall and destruction of 

* See his " Sinai and Palestine," pp. 88-92. 

\ Robinson's "Biblical Researches," vol. ii, p. 552. 



224 THE APOLOGETIC VALUE OF PROPHECY, ETC. 



everjtliiiig tliat opposed and exalted itself against the knowl- 
edge of God. This is manifestly the aspect presented of the 
matter in verse 15 of the prophecy of Obadiah ; the fate of all 
the heathen is bound up with that of Edom ; " For the day of 
the Lord is near upon all tlie heathen ; as thon (namely, Edom) 
hast done, it shall be done nnto thee, thy reward shall return 
upon thine own head ; " that is, in Edom, the quintessence of 
heathenism, all heathendom was to receive as it were its death- 
blow. And at still greater length, and amid images of terrific 
grandeur, the same view is unfolded by Isaiah in chapter 
xxxiv; where all the nations of the earth are summoned 
together, because it is said, " the Lord's indignation was upon 
them all ; " while still, the fury to be poured out was to dis- 
charge its violence, and in a manner rest upon the land of 
Idumea. It is clear that the passage is throughout an ideal 
representation ; clear from the very conjunction of all the 
heathen with Edom, and also from the peculiar boldness of the 
images employed ; such as the dissolving of the host of heaven, 
the sword of the Lord bathing itself in heaven, the mountains 
melting with blood, the turning of the streams into pitch, and 
the dust into brimstone — which, like the ascriptions of corpo- 
real organs and human passions to God, seem purposely in- 
tended to guard us against understanding the words in the 
grossly literal sense.* The ideal character of the representa- 
tion still further appears from the relation which Edom is rep- 
resented as holding toward Israel, and which was such that the 
execution of judgment upon the one was to be the era of deli v- 

* It is strange that the hterahsts do not perceive this ; and that while chiefly 
pressing the apologetic side of prophecy, they should not see how, by singling out 
some points as having been literally fulfilled, while others are lelt of which this 
cannot be alleged, they are surrendering the cause into the enemy's hands. It is 
but scraps of fulfillment which can thus be furnished out from the present state of 
Idumea ; and an unbeliever may justly ask, when presented with them, where are 
the rest ? There are ruined cities, it is true, and thorns and brambles, and wild 
creatures of the desert where palaces once stood; but where is the carnage of all 
nations that was to precede these ? where the burning pitch and brimstone ? where 
the mountains melting with blood ? and where, above all, the people themselves, 
who formed the very heart and center of Isaiah's prophecy? We cannot speak of 
God's word being verified by halves; and of prophecies so interpreted the adver- 
sary might justly say, they are made up of fortunate guesses alternating with pal- 
pable failures. 



THE APOLOGETIC VALUE OF PROPHECY, ETC. 225 



erance, joy, and blessing to the other ; the era when the contro- 
versy of Zion should be settled, and everlasting prosperity be 
ushered in. So that the personification here employed respect- 
ing Edom is entirely of a piece with that which identifies Jacob 
or Abraham, with the whole family of God, and connects 
the names of those patriarchs even with the final issues of 
the divine kingdom. (Gen. xxii, 18 ; Matt, viii, 11 ; Luke 
xvi, 22, etc.) 

When stripped of the mere form and drapery in which it is 
clothed, the prophecy contained in the thirty-fourth and thirty- 
fifth chapters of Isaiah (for the two evidently form but one 
piece) is fraught with the following message : The enmity and 
opposition toward the Lord's cause and people which the 
heathen nations in general, and Edom in particular, had 
evinced, shall be defeated of its end ; not the nation that knows 
and keeps the truth, but the nations that reject and hate it, 
shall come to desolation ; and as Edom might be fitly taken to 
represent the one, and Israel the other, (precisely as of old in 
their progenitors, Esau and Jacob, the carnal and the spiritual 
seed had their representation,) so the destroying judgment of 
heaven, on the one hand, is seen concentrating itself in Edom, 
while on the other its favor and blessing alight upon Zion, and 
thence diffuse all around the greatest joy and satisfaction. The 
prophecy, indeed, is a sort of recapitulation, and sums up in 
one glowing delineation what had already been presented in 
several successive chapters. The prophet had gone over, one 
by one, all the tribes and kingdoms that had acted in a spirit 
of proud and envious rivalry toward the children of God's cove- 
nant, and in respect to each had declared that their pride 
should be humbled, their glory tarnished, the very foundations 
of their dominion shaken and destroyed, while peace and pros- 
perity should be the portion of Zion. And now gathering the 
wliole into a common focus, bringing the contest to a single 
point, with the view of giving a more vivid and impressive 
exhibition of the issues that were pending, he represents the 
vials of divine wrath as emptying themselves in a mighty 
torrent of desolation upon Edom, and securing as its happy 

result to the seed of blessing a pei*petual freedom from those 

16 



226 THE APOLOGETIC VALUE OF PEOPHECY, ETC. 

who afflicted tliem, so tliat thej should possess "undisturbed 
their heritage of good, and be for ever replenished with favor 
from on high. 

Such appears to be the natural import and bearing of this 
prophecy ; and that Edom is to be understood in this repre- 
sentative manner, and with reference more especially to the 
hostile attitude it had assumed toward Israel, seems further 
plain from other prophecies, which speak of a purpose of mercy 
in reserve for Edom, and for all the heathen, when the old 
relation should have been exchanged for another and better 
one. The prophet Amos (chapter ix, 11, 12) giving promise 
of a time when David's tabernacle should be raised up again, 
and its glory revived, mentions as the result, " that they, namely, 
those who belong in the proper sense to the house and kingdom 
of David, may possess the remainder of Edom, and of all the 
heathen over whom my name is called, saith the Lord of hosts 
that doeth this." This clearly implies that the Edom of proph- 
ecy, which was doomed to utter prostration and eternal ruin, 
is only the Edom of bitter and unrelenting hostility to the 
cause and people of God ; that in so far as the children of Edom 
ceased from this, and entered into a friendly relation to the 
covenant of God, and submitted to the yoke of universal 
sovereignty committed to the house of David, instead of break- 
ing it, as of old, from their necks, they should participate in 
the blessing, and have their interests merged in those of the 
people on whom God puts his name to do them good. A 
promise and prospect like this never can be made to har- 
monize with the result that is obtained from the predicted 
judgments upon Edom, as read by the strictly literal style of 
interpretation ; for, according to it, there should be no remnant 
to be possessed, no seed or place of blessing, as connected with 
Edom, but one appalhng scene of sterility, desolation, and curs- 
ing. The demands of a prophetic harmony, as well as a due 
regard to the nature of the prophetic style, require that the 
revelations of judgment should be understood in the manner 
we have explained them. 



THE APOLOGETIC VALUE OF PROPHECY, ETC. 227 



SECTION IT. 

PROPHECIES RESPECTING THE JEWISH PEOPLE. 

From the prophecies which respected the nations that sur- 
rounded Israel, we naturally pass to those which respected 
Israel itself. What prospects did the prophetic volume, as it 
certainly existed about the period of Babylon's beginning to 
lord it over Israel and the world, hold out in regard to the 
covenant-people? They were then undoubtedly in a very de- 
pressed and perilous condition ; and if judged merely by out- 
ward appearances and according to human calculations, they 
were not more likely to have a prolonged existence than the 
small states around them ; immeasurably less likely to occupy 
a prominent place in the future history of the world than Tyre 
or Egypt, Babylon or Persia. But the word of prophecy did 
not frame its anticipations by the outward aspect of things ; 
and never did it speak in bolder terms and a more assured tone 
of the future greatness and glory of the covenant-people, than 
when their political position had reached its lowest ebb. 
While it declared that the Philistines were to cease from being 
a people, that the Moabites, the Ammonites, the Edomites, the 
wealth and power of Tyre, of Egypt, of Babylon, of the whole 
heathen world, were to pass away, it spoke in other language 
respecting the seed of Israel and the house of David : they 
were to rise and take root and flourish, when their rivals and 
oppressors had perished ; were even to give laws to the world, 
and make the whole earth blessed in their blessing. There is 
scarcely one of the later prophets by whom this high destiny 
of Israel is not disclosed, and in the larger prophetical books 
it occupies a most prominent place. Yet, when we look at- 
tentively into them we And it is no indiscriminate assertion of 
future eminence and glory, not a resolute vindication of the 
highest rank for the Israelitish people at large, such as the 
fond yearnings of patriotism or the promptings of ambition 
might have put forth ; but a variable and checkered prospect, 
in Avhich the evil was strangely to intermingle with the good. 



228 THE APOLOGETIC YALUE OF PEOPHECT, ETC. 

and the greatest indignities and sufferings were somehow to be 
combined with the highest glory. Micah, prophesying more 
than a hundred years before the Babylonish captivity, speaks 
both of extreme desolation and singular blessing being destined 
for Jerusalem : she was to be plowed as heaps, yet was to be 
delivered from her enemies ; nay, made the subject of a salva- 
tion and a glory which should raise her to the head of the na- 
tions, while it should involve herself in trouble and distraction, 
(ii, 10 ; iii, 12 ; iv, 10-13 ; vii.) In the latter half of Isaiah's 
prophecies, also, these two themes constantly alternate with 
each other in what is said of Israel's future. In an earlier 
prophecy, the brief but pregnant and comprehensive revelation 
of chapter six, it was distinctly foretold that, on account of the 
prevailing hardness and corruption of the -people's hearts, 
^' men should be removed far away, and there should be a great 
forsaking to the midst of the land ;" that even though there 
should be a remnant, a tenth, that should return, yet this also 
should be for consumption, [or, being eaten ;] and for the same 
reason as of old, because sin should again obtain a footing in 
them ; for it is added that, amid all troubles and consumptions, 
the holy seed should be the substance in them, the one truly 
conservative element. In like manner, in Daniel's prophecy 
regarding the coming of Messiah, toward the close of the 
seventy weeks, while the greatest results were then to be ac- 
complished, "making reconciliation for iniquity, bringing in 
everlasting righteousness, sealing up the vision of prophecy, and 
anointing a holy of holies ;" it is still said that " desolations 
were appointed," insomuch that even " the city and the sanc- 
tuary were to be destroyed." So again in Zechariah, chapter 
xiii, 8, 9, in immediate connection with the smiting of the shep- 
herd of the sheep, there is predicted the cutting off of two thirds 
of the people, and even the remaining third was to be " brought 
through the fire, and refined as silver is refined." In Malachi, 
the last of all the prophets, the aspect that is presented of 
Israel's future is in many respects dark and lowering ; images 
of terror and alarm are crowded into it ; it speaks of a day that 
should burn as an oven, consuming the wicked as stubble, of 
the Lord's presence being like a refiner's fire and a fuller's 



THE APOLOGETIC YALUE OF PKOPHECY, ETC. 229 

soap, of the land being possibly smitten with a curse ; while 
yet the salvation of the Lord was snre to come, and when it did 
come was to bring power to tread down the wicked, in order 
that the righteous might be exalted to the chief place of honor 
and blessing. 

ISTow we have surely some right to demand of one who, if 
disposed to doubt, is not determined to reject all proof of super- 
natural insight and direction, whether we have not in these 
diversified predictions the indication of a knowledge essentially 
divine ? Here, again, it is not some loose and random utter- 
ances we have to deal with, such as either the forebodings of a 
gloomy imagination or the excitement of a fervid and hopeful 
enthusiasm might call forth. There is not only foresight, but 
foresight of a most impartial and discriminating kind, capable 
alike of descrying the darker and the brighter aspects of the 
future, dwelling even with painful emphasis upon the coming 
evil and reiterating it, yet without ever losing sight of the 
coming good ; and even when the clouds of present trouble 
gathered thickest, only proceeding Avith a clearer eye and a 
more assured step to reveal the glorious and blessed future that 
lay beyond. Most remarkably have both parts of the prospect- 
ive outline been fulfilled. The subsequent history presents 
many a dark and troubled page to substantiate the vision of 
coming evil ; corruptions within and calamities without, defec- 
tions the most heinous, and chastisements the most severe ; yet 
in the midst of all, and in spite of all, there came out a great- 
ness and energy, an efiulgence of light and life and glory, 
which strikingly contrasts with the comparative smallness of 
Israel's position, and the external meanness of their circum- 
stances. The mightiest and most imposing of the surrounding 
kingdoms came to naught ; but Israel still existed, and we may 
say, in the language of another, (Dr. Arnold,) " still exists 
unchanged. Still God's people in every land carry back their 
sympathies unbroken to the age of the first father of the faith- 
ful ; the patriarchs and propheits are the spiritual ancestors of 
the apostles and ourselves ; their prayers are ours, their cause 
was ours, for their God was ours, [and the Messiah born of 
them is our light and salvation.] And if Israel after the flesh 



230 THE APOLOGETIC YALUE OF PROPHECY, ETC. 



were to return to the Lord, what has she lost of her old iden- 
tity ? Place does not make a nation, but the sameness of sym- 
pathies. And in this respect there is nothing of Israel in the 
earliest times which would be dead to Israel now. This can 
be said of no other nation upon the earth ; and thus has Israel 
endured, because she was, though imperfectly, the representa- 
tive of the cause of that God who alone endureth forever." 

It is enouo-h here to look thus to the main features of the 
prophetic outline ; those more prominent aspects of it, which 
cannot fail to impress themselves on any careful and unpreju- 
diced reader of Old Testament prophecy, in connection with 
the past of Israelitish history. Its bearing upon the still 
remaining future is another point, and one that will call for 
separate and particular investigation. In the mean time, and 
as regards the plain import of a whole series of prophecies con- 
cerning Israel, it seems undeniable that most striking fulfill- 
ments have taken place of what no merely human eye could 
have foreseen, nor the shrewdest intellect anticipated. 

SECTION III. 

PROPHECIES RESPECTING THE MESSIAH. 

The portions of the prophetic testimony we have already 
considered argue nothing directly for the truth of Christianity. 
They afford, we think, conclusive proof of the supernatural 
foresight of the persons who indited them, and so may be 
regarded as placing the seal of divine attestation on the writ- 
ings of the Old Testament prophets. Unbelieving Jews, how- 
ever, hold this in common with ourselves ; while they reject 
Christ and the Scriptures of the 'New Testament, they appeal 
to the confirmation, which their own history and that of other 
nations mentioned in ancient prophecy yields, of the divine 
direction under which their prophets wrote. But the apolo- 
getic value of prophecy would be small if it stopped there. By 
much the most important question now is, how it tells on the 
claims of Jesus of Nazareth to be the Messiah ? For here we 
have to do with the main trunk of the prophetic tree, not sim- 



THE APOLOGETIC VALUE OF PEOPHECY, ETC. 231 

ply with a few occasional brandies. And accordingly it is 
here that the Scriptures of the 'New Testament lay the great 
stress of the argument from prophecy ; " the spirit of proph- 
ecy," they declare, " is the testimony of Jesus ; " and both 
Jesus himself and his apostles made constant reference to the 
things written in the prophets as what at once required and 
found a verification in his appearance among men. Here, 
therefore, especially, it is necessary to compare together 
prophecy and history. 

We again conceive ourselves in the presence of one who 
doubts ; doubts, perhaps, whether there were anything more in 
the prophecies of the Old Testament than certain indefinite 
longings after some distinguished guide and leader, or a series 
of guides and leaders, who might carry the nation to a high 
degree of glory ; and whether anything written and verified in 
this respect was so peculiar as to exceed the limits of men's 
unaided powers. How should we proceed to deal with such a 
person ? The difficulty is not where to find materials of proof, 
but which to select as best fitted to produce conviction on a 
mind that is likely to be affected only by the more palpable 
and obvious lines of resemblance. In such a case nothing 
more than fragments of the truth can be presented, as it will 
naturally appear to those who are conversant with the entire 
field. Yet even a fragmentary exliibition of the truth ought 
here to be sufficient, if rightly presented to carry conviction 
to a mind that is not absolutely foreclosed against it. There 
is, in the first instance, the gradual contracting of the purpose 
of Heaven from a more general to a more specific object of 
hope and expectation, till it evidently centers in a person of 
singular gifts and endowments ; beginning with the woman's 
seed generally, though as the nature of the case implied, and 
the course of Providence soon clearly determined that seed, 
only in the spiritual line ; then confining itself to the seed of 
Abraham, still, of course, under spiritual conditions ; then to 
the tribe of Judah, where it first distinctly assumes tlie personal 
form in the promise of a future Shiloh or prince of peace ; next 
to the house of David, a family within the tribe of Judah, 
which is appointed to the high destiny of carrying out the pro- 



232 THE APOLOGETIC VALUE OF PROPHECY, ETC. 

visions of tlie Abrahamic covenant, of bearing sway in the 
affairs of men, and diffusing among them the blessings of sal- 
vation ; then finally, to a son of that house, a definite child of 
promise, to be born of a virgin, and somehow mysteriously 
connected with the Godhead, so that divine names are freely 
applied to him, and a divine work — the work of making recon- 
ciliation for iniquity, and in the proper sense, redeeming a 
people whom he was to rule and bless — ^is associated with his 
appearance and mission. 

Finding thus the proper personality and special destination 
of the Messiah distinctly marked in the prophecies of the Old 
Testament, we would hereafter point to the local circumstances 
and indi^ddual characteristics plainly ascribed to him; the 
clear designation, for example, of the place of his birth in Beth- 
lehem-Ephratah, (Micah v, 2,) historically verified in a manner 
that effectually prevented the possibility of collusion; the 
mingled lowliness and majesty of his appearance, as of a rod 
from the stem of Jesse, and a branch or tender suckling from 
his roots, (Isa. xi, 1 ; Jer. xxiii, 5 ;) or as one marred in his vis- 
age, and without either form or comeliness, yet withal a King, 
clothed with power and authority to subdue every form of evil, 
and bear the government on his shoulder, coming like other 
kings, with a herald or forerunner, yet not coming in lordly 
state, but as one meek and lowly, riding on an ass, (Isa. ix, 7 ; 
lii, 14-liii ; Zech. ix, 9 ; Mai. iii, 1 ;) on the one side, having 
experience of the sorest trials and indignities, a man of sorrows 
and acquainted with grief, (Isa. liii, 3 ;) on the other, possessing 
every element of greatness, the elect of God, and the hope of 
the world, (Isa. xlii, 1-4 ;) nay, more marvelous still, a priest 
as well as a king, and a priest that was himself to become an 
offering for sin, and give his life a ransom for many, while yet 
he should prolong his days, and out of the travail of his soul 
should have given to him a seed and kingdom in every respect 
worthy of his incomparable merits and successful mediation. 
(Isa. liii ; Zech. vi, 12, 13 ; Psa. ex.) What a singular com- 
bination of qualities and results ! And yet how completely 
authenticated by the history ! The heights and depths ; the 
apparent anomalies and seeming incompatibilities, such as no 



THE APOLOGETIC VALUE OF PEOPHECY, ETC. 233 



human imagination of itself could have conceived, yet all most 
wonderfully meeting in the history of Jesus of l^azareth. If 
such a series of characteristics, traced out hundreds of years 
before the person appeared in whom they were to be exempli- 
fied, could have at once originated in human conjecture and 
received, as they have done, the seal of Divine Providence, then 
it may justly be affirmed, there are no certain landmarks 
between the human and the divine ; the possible achievements 
of man have nothing essentially to distinguish them from the 
powers and operations of Godhead. 

We might even carry the argument further. As our Lord 
himself spake of things written concerning him in Moses, as 
well as the prophets that required to be fulfilled, so we might 
rise from the individual prophecies contained in the later writ- 
ings of the Old Testament to the one great prophecy embod- 
ied in the law. We might say, to use the language of another, 
" Though you were to evacuate the Old Testament of every 
express miracle it records, though you were to convert the 
prophets into jugglers and the people into fools, and make our 
Elijahs and Isaiahs pretenders to power and conjecturers in 
knowledge, could you even so clear the Old Testament of won- 
ders ? You may deny the story of miracles, but can you deny 
the miracle of the story ? Can you resolve the enormous diffi- 
culty of this history, these recorded habits, and above all, this 
recorded religion ? You deny, or in confessing, you neutralize 
any typical import, any prospective atonement. Mark, then, 
the mysteries that emerge on your supposition. The whole 
spiritual system of the Hebrew Scriptures is made up of two 
elements, entwined with the most intricate closenesss, yet abso- 
lutely opposite in character. You are, then, to answer how it 
was that every particular of a long and laborious system of 
minute, and often very repulsive, sacrificial observances is 
found united in the same volume with conceptions of God, that 
surpass, in their profound and internal spirituality, all that 
unassisted man has ever elsewhere imagined, nay, that all our 
modern refinement is unable to emulate. What miraculous 
mind was it that combined these singular contradictions? 
Where is there a real parallel to this mysterious inconsistency % 



234 THE APOLOGETIC YALUE OF PEOPHECY, ETC. 

Who is this strange Instructor, or series of instructors, that 
now portrays the form of the one everlasting essence, hid in 
the vail of attributes that are themselves unfathomable, and 
now issues the most minute and elaborate directions as to the 
proper mode and the tremendous obligation of slaughtering a 
yearling lamb, and this as the duty of him who would ap- 
proach the eternal Spirit ? Who is he that at one moment 
enounces the simplest, sublimest code of human duties in exist- 
ence ; at another, nay, in the same page, the same sentence, 
exhorts, with equal earnestness, to the equal necessity of 
drenching the earth with animal blood as the appointed path 
of human purification ? Here, then, in the very texture of the 
Old Testament, and its polity, is a mystery greater than any 
you can escape by denying its predictive import. It is alto- 
gether impossible on any supposition but the one, the supposi- 
tion which alone can elevate ceremonies to the dignity of 
moral obligations. Judaism, with a typical atonement, may 
be a miracle, or a chain of miracles ; but Judaism without it 
is a greater miracle still." ^ 

This train of thought, though more immediately directed to 
the establishment of the divine character of the Mosaic writings, 
is equally applicable as an argument for the truth of Christ's 
pretensions. For a typical atonement — ^in other words, the 
concealed prophecy which was embodied in the sacrificial sys- 
tem of the Old Testament, being what alone accounts for the 
system as it actually existed, the antitypical atonement of the 
Grospel, or the accomplishment in Christ of a real propitiation 
for the sins of the world, and this as the grand end and object 
of his work on earth — shows a correspondence between the 
work of Christ as historically narrated in the Gospels, and as 
presupposed and foreshadowed in the handwriting of Moses, 
which in both respects bespeaks the operation of a divine hand. 
It does so all the more that the correspondence is one which 
does not lie upon the surface, and which neither the friends 
nor the enemies of Jesus could be brought to understand, till 
the work itself was accomplished. But here again, perhaps, 
it may be replied, that the argument derived from the fulfiU- 

* Dr. Archer Butler's Sermons, First Series, p. 192. 



THE APOLOGETIC VALUE OF PKOPHECY, ETC. 235 

ment of prophecy, whether in its more concealed or in its more 
direct and specific form, might have been sufficient to carry 
conviction, if there had been nothing to countervail it on the 
other side — if, in the same prophetical writings, there had not 
been other predictions which appear to have failed in their 
accomplishment. The predominating aspect under which 
prophecy spake of the expected Messiah was that of a king 
coming for the purpose of occupying the throne of David. 
But where were the signs of his royal state and dignity ? Is 
it not a fact, to which the Gospel history itself bears ample 
witness, that his own disciples were disappointed in this respect ; 
and up to the very eve of his departure — till, in short, they 
could not better themselves — clung to the hope that their Mas- 
ter should still set up an earthly kingdom? Is it not also a 
fact that many students of prophecy in the present day, com- 
paring what was predicted with what has been done, firmly 
maintain that Jesus has not yet got possession of the throne 
promised to him, and cannot do so till he comes in glory to 
erect Jerusalem into the seat of his kingdom ? There is no 
denying this any more than the other allegation ; and it can- 
not be too much regretted that the adversaries here have their 
quiver filled for them by the hands of friends. Could we bring 
the adversaries to the position of friends, could they be per- 
suaded on other grounds to regard Jesus as the promised Mes- 
siah, it might matter comparatively little whether they should 
consider the kingly rule and government now exercised by 
Christ as that designated of old by the name of David's throne 
and kiilgdom, or a provisional dominion in process of time to 
merge into the other. But it is another thing when the alleged 
want of the kingdom lies across the threshold, a stumbling- 
block to the acknowledgment of Jesus as the true Messiah, and 
it is urged as a reason for denying that prophecy met its proper 
fulfillment in him. He was to come, it is said, as a King. As 
David's son and heir he was to be born in Bethlehem, to oc- 
cupy David's throne ; he was to be conceived of the virgin ; 
and in constantly allowing himself to be addressed as the son 
of David he plainly countenanced the idea that he was to have 
his throne in Zion. Did not the result, then, prove both him 



236 THE APOLOGETIC VALUE OF PROPHECY, ETC. 

and tliem to have been mistaken ? Did it not evince that the 
ancient predictions, in one grand particxdar, failed of their 
proper end ? 

We unhesitatingly answer, 'No ; though we should be at a 
loss to perceive how such an answer could be given, on the 
strictly literal principle of interpretation, the principle which 
holds that prophecy is nothing but history wi'itten beforehand ; 
for if so, it must have adopted the style of history, and de- 
scribed everything according to the naked appearance and 
reality. But the case becomes entirely different, if here, as 
elsewhere, the Spirit of prophecy gave intimation of what was 
to come in language appropriate to an ecstatical condition, 
and in doing so served itself of known and existing forms to 
unfold corresponding but nobler and better things to come. 
In that case the representation 7nust have been, to a large 
extent, figurative and symbolical ; a representation of it after 
its nature, rather than the precise form it should assume. No 
more should it have been expected that the Messiah was to be 
a king on the earthly model of David, than that he should be 
a prophet on the same level with Moses, or a priest after the 
imperfect type of those who presented their fleshly offerings on 
a brazen* altar. No more, to prove him the occupant of David's 
throne, was it necessary for him to possess the outward forms 
and trappings of Jewish royalty, than to prove his people's 
personal union to him must they have the actual participation 
of his flesh and blood. Standing as to the constitution of his 
person immeasurably above those ancient prototypes, he was 
of necessity higher also in the character of his work and king- 
dom ; so that, when exhibited and promised under the form of 
the old, a relative agreement only, not an exact likeness, is to 
be understood. That he was destined to occupy the throne 
and kingdom of David meant simply that he was, like David, 
to hold the place of a king over God's heritage, and to do to 
the fiill what David could do only in the most partial and im- 
perfect manner : bring deliverance, safety, and blessing to the 
people of God. With the divine properties of the king, how- 
ever, and the world-wide domain of his kingdom, all of neces- 
sity rose to a higher place ; Immanuel's reign must be another 



I 



THE APOLOGETIC VALUE OF PROPHECY, ETC. 237 

thing than that of the son of Jesse, it must be spiritual, heav- 
enly, eternal. A kingdom of an inferior description, if pos- 
sessing more of 2, formal resemblance to David's, would have 
had less of real conformity to the word of promise ; it could 
not have verified the prophecies ; for it should have bespoken 
the absence of that divine element which lay at the foundation 
of all that Messiah was peculiarly to be and to do. 

Thus the objection against the fulfillment of prophecy in 
Christ, derived from his not having assumed the outward ap- 
pearance of a Jewish monarch, falls to the ground. It pro- 
ceeds on a merely superficial view of the connection between 
the old and the new in God's dispensations, and a consequent 
misapprehension of the import of the prophetic language, as 
growing out of and founded upon that connection. Follow it 
consistently out, and no landing-place can be found short of the 
Christianized Judaism of popery. But take into account the 
whole circumstances of the case ; make due allowance for the 
shadowy and imperfect state of things under which the proph- 
ets lived and wrote ; above all, give free scope to the higher 
elements that, according to prophecy itself, were to develop 
themselves in Messiah's person and kingdom, and nothing will 
be found wanting of that real and substantial agreement which 
we expect to subsist between the anticipations of prophecy and 
the facts of history. The more inward some of the lines of 
agreement are, they only serve to indicate a deeper and diviner 
harmony. Jesus of Nazareth needed no outward enthrone- 
ment or local seat of government on earth to constitute him 
the possessor of David's kingdom, as he needed no physical 
anointing to consecrate him priest for evermore, or material 
altar and temple for the due presentation of his acceptable 
service. Being the Son of the living God, and as Son the heir 
of all things, he possessed, from the first, the powers of the 
kingdom ; and proved that he possessed them in every authori- 
tative word he uttered, every work of deliverance he performed, 
every judgment he pronounced, every act of mercy and for- 
giveness he dispensed, and the resistless control he wielded 
over the elements of nature and the realms of the dead. These 
were tlie signs of royalty he bore about with him upon earth ; 



238 THE APOLOGETIC VALUE OF PROPHECY, ETC. 

and wonderful though they were, eclipsing in real grandeur all 
the glory of David and Solomon, they were still but the earlier 
preludes of that peerless majesty which David from afar de- 
scried when he saw him as his Lord seated in royal state at 
the Father's right hand, and on which he formally entered 
when he ascended up on high with the word, " All power is 
given unto me in heaven and on earth ; and lo ! I am with 
you alway, even to the end of the world." 



SECTION IV. 

' THE PROPHECIES RESPECTING THE DESTRUCTION OF . 

JERUSALEM. 

"We have hitherto confined our attention to the prophecies 
of the Old Testament, and to that portion of these which had 
scarcely or not at all entered on their fulfillment at the close 
of the Babylonish captivity ; because , it is in regard to such^ 
that the conditions, formerly specified as necessary to be borne 
in mind for handling successfully the argument from prophecy^ 
most distinctly and obviously hold. It is only from the diffi- 
culty of rendering manifest to a distrustful and doubting mind 
the existence of those conditions in the case of some other 
prophecies, of some, especially, in the writings of Daniel, where 
the particulars are most full, and the fulfillment in various 
parts the most striking, that we omit them in a consideration 
of the apologetic use of prophecy. Their use will be found 
rather in directing the views and establishing the faith of those 
who already believe in the divine authority and inspiration of 
Scripture, than in overcoming the scruples of such as may still 
be lingering in the regions of unbelief. And from the close 
connection in form, partly also in substance, between the 
prophecies of Daniel and the Revelation of St. John, it is 
scarcely possible to enter on a particular examination of the 
one, without going first into a pretty full consideration of the 
other. 

There is no reason, however, why the argument from proph- 
ecy should be altogether conducted with a reference to the 



THE APOLOGETIC VALUE OF PROPHECY, ETC. 239 



predictions of the Old Testament. For, wliile ^ew Testament 
Scripture, in perfect accordance with the dispensation to which 
it belongs, deals much less in specific announcements respect- 
ing the future than the Old, it is yet by no means absolutely 
devoid of such. There is one in particular which has also a 
point of contact with some of the Old Testament prophecies, 
and is but a detailed exhibition of what they more generally 
indicate, namely, our Lord's prediction regarding the destruc- 
tion of Jerusalem. The prophecies of Isaiah, (chapter vi,) and 
Daniel, (chapter ix,) already referred to, give no doubtful indi- 
cation of troubles and desolations which the spirit of apostasy 
was yet to bring upon Judah and Jerusalem, even after the 
people had regained a considerable degree of power and pros- 
perity, nay, after the Messiah himself had come. Yarious 
prophecies also in Zechariah, especially those in chapters v, xii, 
xiii, evidently pointed in the same direction ; in them the 
promise of Messiah and the prospect of good that was to be the 
characteristic of his times, was coupled with the mention of 
fearful calamities and floods of tribulation on account of sin. 
But it was our Lord who first clearly announced the coming 
retribution, and described it as one that was to bring along 
with it the most sweeping desolation, and as so near at hand 
that the existing generation was to see it accomplished. The 
predictions of Christ to this effect were no doubt uttered not 
very long before the event, and it has sometimes been surmised 
that the publication of the Gospels which contain the prophecy 
may have been subsequent to the occurrence of the event. But 
the surmise is so destitute of all probability, that no candid and 
serious adversary can think of urging it. The very form of the 
prediction, in its most specific announcement, is against the 
supposition, since it is so much occupied with directions and 
warnings to the disciples how to conduct themselves in antici- 
pation of the event ; w^hile the testimony of antiquity is quite 
uniform as to the priority of the prophecy. Uttered, then, at 
the time it purports to have been, that is, not less than forty 
years before the calamities it depicts ; at a time when, in the 
political horizon, there was no appearance of any impending 
storm, and on simply natural grounds, there was no reason to 



2:1:0 THE APOLOGETIC VALUE OF PROPHECY, ETC. 

< apprehend extreme measures of any kind, it can be ascribed to 
nothing but divine foresight on the part of Christ that he 
should have so clearly descried, not only the approaching dan- 
ger, but the overwhelming nature of the catastrophe in which 
it was to terminate : first, a strait siege of the city, then its 
surrender into the hands of the enemy, followed by its merci- 
less destruction — its very temple laid in ruins, and its people 
scattered abroad, trodden down by the gentiles ; while, on the 
other hand, the Gospel of his salvation, which they had despised 
and rejected, should spread far and wide, and everywhere take 
root in the earth. (Matt, xxiv, 2, 15, 21 ; Luke xxi, 6, 20-24.) 
To foresee such results, results in many respects opposed to 
the intentions and the general policy of the Homans, who were 
the chief instruments in effecting it, and with such a. tone of 
assurance announce them so long beforehand, was not to speak 
■ in the manner of men ; and no one who looks calmly into the 
circumstances can ever find an explanation that will be satis- 
factory to his own mind, by the help merely of some unusual 
degree of shrewdness on the part of Jesus, or of a certain for- 
tuitous combination of circumstances in providence. 

We refrain from entering further into the details of the sub- 
ject, which would carry us beside our present purpose. In 
another connection, the circumstances of Jerusalem's destruc- 
tion will come again to be noticed in a subsequent chapter. 
And though the argument from JSTew Testament prophecy 
admits of being strengthened by the consideration of what is 
written of Antichrist and the great apostacy, yet we refrain 
also from taking up this topic in the present connection. The 
diversities of opinion now current even among Protestant and 
Evangelical divines on the precise import of the predictions 
bearing on that subject, have in great measure destroyed its 
apologetic value, and require for it in a work like the present 
a separate treatment. Meanwhile, we trust, there is enough 
in the line of argument indicated to show that a most import- 
ant and conclusive branch of evidence is yielded by prophecy 
in support of the great facts and doctrines of the Bible. We 
must say, however, in conclusion, that for a just appreciation 
of this evidence, and the capacity either of using or profiting 



THE APOLOGETIC VALUE OF PEOPHECT, ETC. 241 

by it aright, the careful study of the prophetic Scriptures on 
sound principles of interpretation is indispensable. Here also 
it is the patient and continued search to which the choicest 
treasures are revealed. Could we only persuade those who 
have placed themselves in an antagonistic position, and con- 
template the subject from a distance, to take up in a spirit of 
candid and earnest inquiry so much as one or two portions of 
the prophetical Scriptures, and consider them attentively on 
every side, we would expect more from the exercise than from 
all argumentations of a more general kind ; for though the 
circle embraced might be of limited extent, yet the deeper and 
more delicate lines of agreement it contains with the realities 
of the Gospel would be perceived as well as those which are 
of a more palpable description. And in regard to those who 
would pursue the study, not for conviction, but for further 
enlightenment in the knowledge, and a firmer establishment 
in the faith of the Gospel, resort should be had less to works 
devoted to an exposition of the argument from prophecy than 
to the word of prophecy itself, and its correct interpretation. 
They should make themselves conversant more with exegetical 
than with apologetical sources. And in proportion as their 
acquaintance with the divine word becomes more discrimin- 
ating and comprehensive, they will also become more thor- 
oughly satisfied respecting the coherence of its several parts, 
and be more sensible of the numberless points of coincidence 
that exist between its predictions of things to come and the 

subsequent events and issues of Providence. 

16 



242 THE PEOPHETICAL FUTURE OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OP THE JEWISH PEOPLE. 

The predictions noticed in the preceding chapter respecting 
the natural seed of Israel had respect only to the past fortunes 
of the people, and their existing condition. So far, there is a 
general agreement both among Jews themselves and among 
Christian interpreters, as to the import and fulfillment of the 
prophecies. But the matter assumes another aspect when we 
turn from the past or present to the future. Here the greatest 
diversity prevails ; not between Jews and Christians merely, 
but between one class of Christian interpreters and another. 
The Jews hold, and on their principles, indeed, consistently 
hold, that according to the prophecies of Old Testament Scrip- 
ture they shall as a people be gathered from their dispersions 
by the Messiah and restored to their ancient territory ; that 
there the temple shall again be built, and its worship set up 
anew after the handwriting of Moses ; and that, as thus estab- 
lished and presided over, they shall stand politically at the 
head of all the nations of the earth. Such, generally, is the 
Jewish expectation ; and there are not wanting, especially in 
the present day, evangelical Christians who entirely concur 
with the Jews in their interpretation of the prophecies, and 
confidently anticipate not only a restoration of the Jewish 
people to the land of Palestine, but also a reinstitution of the 
rites and services of the law, to be performed in a Christian 
spirit, and frequented by Christian worshipers from every 
region of the earth. A much larger portion, however, concur 
onlv in so far as the national restoration to Palestine is con- 
eerned, along with a certain pre-eminence in honor and Chris- 
tian influence beyond what shall be possessed by any other 
people in Christendom. And another portion of Christian 
interpreters — also a very large one — deeming it impossible to 



THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE. 243 

divide in the work of interpretation between the national 
restoration of the Jewish people and the re-establishment of 
their ancient polity and worship, reject the one as well as the 
other, and hold that the proper meaning of the prophecies, in 
so far as they bear on the future of Israel, is to be made good 
simply by the conversion of the people to the Christian faith, 
and their participation in the privileges and hopes of the 
Church of Christ. 

Such, omitting all minor shades of difference, is the three- 
fold view that prevails upon the subject, and which may be 
designated, from the modes of interpretation on which they are 
respectively based, as the Jewish, the semi-Jewish, and the 
spiritualistic. In the Jewish, we of course include the first 
class of opinions maintained by Christian writers, not as 
intending thereby to disparage the Christianity of those who 
hold it, but because the view itself coincides in all its ostensible 
features with the distinctively Jewish one, and proceeds en- 
tirely upon the Jewish principle of prophetical interpretation. 
That principle is the strictly literal sense of prophecy, the 
principle which insists on reading prophecy simply as history 
written beforehand ; and whatever has been urged in previous 
portions of this work against that style of interpretation is 
applicable in its full force to this particular branch of the sub- 
ject."^ The principle of literalism is not espoused in this 
extreme form by those who hold what we have called the 
semi- Jewish opinion ; they are prepared to apply to Christ and 
the Church of the 'New Testament every prophecy that is so 
applied by the sacred writers, or may admit on similar grounds 
of such an application. They think that in the language of 
prophecy what is said of Zion and Jerusalem, or of David's 
throne and kingdom, has to a large extent already received its 
fulfillment in Christ, or is in the course of doing so ; and that 
every prediction couched in the terms of the Old Testament 
shadows must be regarded in accordance with the spirit of the 
New Testament dispensation, as capable of receiving fulfill- 
ment only in a non-literal or spiritual sense. But at the same 
time, they are of opinion that many prophecies respecting tlie 

* See particularly in Part I, chap, v, sees, i and iii. 



244 THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE. 

Jewisli people neither require nor admit of any such modified 
application; prophecies which speak in so distinct, specific, 
and circumstantial a manner of the gathering of that people 
out of all their dispersions, and settling them again in their 
former haunts with even more than their former glory, that it 
seems difficult, if not impossible, to understand them otherwise 
than in the most obvious and natural import of the language. 
There are collateral considerations which appear in their judg- 
ment to strengthen the position which they occupy ; but this 
aspect of the prophecies forms the proper basis of the view 
they entertain. So far, therefore, it also rests on the principle 
of literalism, though restrained within comparatively narrow 
limits, confined chiefly to what respects the land and peo- 
ple of the Jews. And the main point to be determined 
respecting it is, whether in the prophecies themselves, or 
in the mode of applying them in ISTew Testament Scrip- 
ture, there is ground for maintaining such a distinction as 
it draws between this particular subject and the others 
with which it stands in the prophetic volume so intimately 
connected. 

The class of interpreters who adopt the spiritualistic view 
conceive that there is no valid ground for the distinction 
referred to. Taking up their position on distinctively Gospel 
principles, and contemplating all that is written in Old Testa- 
ment Scripture of Gospel times primarily in a ISTew Testament 
light, they apply uniformly one and the same rule of inter- 
pretation to the prophecies which bear on the future of the 
covenant-people. What it obliges them to hold in respect to 
the religion and the more distinguishing peculiarities of Israel, 
they feel constrained to hold also in respect to their land and 
polity. And in support of this view they are wont to adduce 
a number of particular passages, which in their plain and 
obvious aspect seem to abolish along with other distinctions 
those also of land and people, and to leave no room for any 
name or commonwealth in the kingdom of Christ, but that of 
the one body, formed out of all people and tribes and tongues, 
which is knit together by the bond of a living faith and a com- 
mon participation in the blessings of Christ's redemption. It 



THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE. 245 

is not enough, however, to produce a series of passages possess- 
ing this import ; for they are met hj a counter-set of passages 
on the other side, and in looking at the subject as so presented 
the mind is apt to be perplexed and bewildered by what seems 
so many cross lights and contradictory statements. The ques- 
tion can never be satisfactorily determined by being viewed 
and discussed in so isolated a manner. It must be seen in the 
light, not of this particular Scripture or that, but of great 
fundamental principles — principles which may enable us to 
distinguish between Scripture and Scripture — between those 
parts of Scripture which relate to th^ foundations of God's 
kingdom, which fix and determine the for7n as well as the suh- 
stance of things belonging to it, and those which, from being of 
a subsidiary nature, relate only to what may be fit or practica- 
ble within the settled landmarks. Unless some distinctions of 
this kind can be made good, there may be no end to the con- 
troversy on the field of argument ; and it is with a view mainly 
to the establishment of such a result, that we propose now to 
conduct the investigation. Several incidental topics will be 
left unnoticed, in order the more fully to concentrate attention 
on what we deem to be the great and determining elements of 
the question. 

I. With this end in view, we naturally turn our eye, in the 
first instance, to the direct teaching of our Lord and his apos- 
tles ; for there, beyond all question, it is that we find the reve- 
lations which are in the strictest sense fundamental as to all 
that is to distinguish the kingdom of God in 'New Testament 
times. "What Moses was to the Old Testament Church Christ 
is to the New, though himself as much higher than Moses as 
the New is above the Old. And if the prophets under the 
Old Testament, from being in their position altogether inferior 
to Moses, and having only revelations by vision while he had 
them by direct and open intercourse, could introduce no alter- 
ations in the principles or even forms of things settled by him ; 
if the last of them wound up the whole prophetic testimony in 
its direct bearing upon those to whom it was delivered, by 
charging them to " remember the law of Moses, God's servant, 
which he commanded to him in Horeb for all Israel, with the 



246 THE PEOPHETICAL FUTUKE OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE. 

statutes and judgments," (Mai. iv, 4 ; *) if the prophets of the 
Old Testament stood in this subordinate relationship to Moses, 
how much more must they have done so to Christ ? They 
were charged with no commission to interfere with anything 
which the Mediator of the old covenant had ordained; to 
bring in no new rite, to establish no new relation ; for even 
the kingly form of government was prospectively indicated 
and authorized by Moses ; how much less, therefore, could any 
word have been given them, which was to have the effect of 
countervailing the principles or modifying the constitution 
brought in by the unspeakably greater Mediator of the new 
covenant? Indeed, the consideration reaches further than 
this; the conclusion derived from it holds, not merely as 
between the prophets of the Old Testament and Christ, but 
also between those prophets and the apostles of Christ ; for the 
least of the apostles was greater than John the Baptist, who 
again was greater than any of the prophets ; and the communi- 
cations by the apostles (for the most part) were also open and 
direct, not by vision. Here, therefore, in the teaching of 
Christ and his apostles must be sought all the essential princi- 
ples which go to determine the nature, the constitution, and 
form of Christ's kingdom ; or to use the words of a canon for- 
merly enunciated, ''Everything which affects the condition 
and destiny of the 'New Testament Church has its clearest 
determination in New Testament Scripture." f So that where 
there is any doubt or uncertainty, it is by this later Scripture 
we are to interpret the prophecies of former times, not by the 
prophecies that we are to exphcate or resolve the later and 
higher revelations. 

What, then, is the bearing and import of this teaching of 
our Lord and his apostles on the special subject before us? Is 
it such as to give us reason to expect a future restoration of 
the Jewish people, or a re-establishment of their old economy 
as if something of importance for the Church depended on it ? 
Unquestionably there is no explicit announcement to this effect 
in the whole range of the historical and epistolary writings of 
the New Testament. The infliction of divine judg-ment upon 

* See Part I, chap. i. \ See p. 164. 



THE PKOPHETICAL FUTUEE OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE. 24T 

tlie mass of the Jewisli people was very distinctly proclaimed 
by cm* Lord himself, with the destruction of their city and 
temple, and the scattering of the community at once from the 
kingdom of God and from the land of their fathers. But in 
not so much as one passage does he unequivocally indicate for 
them a regathering to their paternal home, or a reinvestment 
with their former relative distinctions and privileges ; far less 
is there any statement to imply that the temple-worship 
should be again set up as the common religious center and 
resort of Christendom. And in these respects the disciples are 
of one mind with their Master ; they are equally silent upon 
the topics referred to. 

It is true, there are a few passages which are sometimes rep- 
resented as by implication teaching those things ; but still at 
the most it is only by implication, and a very slight considera- 
tion of them is enough to show not necessarily or certainly 
even that. "When our Lord, for example, spake of a coming 
time when the twelve apostles should sit on thrones judging 
the twelve tribes of Israel, (Matt, xix, 28,) there is nothing 
whatever to indicate (even taking it quite literally) in what 
region it should be, under what form of religious worship, or 
even whether as collected into one body or distributed through 
several localities. Nothing on such points is either affirmed 
or denied in the statement. Nor, again, when foretelling the 
coming overthrow and the long-continued degradation that 
was to follow, in the memorable words, " Jerusalem shall be 
trodden down of the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles 
shall be fulfilled," (Luke xxi, 24,) was anything said of a return 
to the ancient home of Israel and its ritual worship, not even 
of a restitution of the old nationality. Jerusalem is obviously 
to be understood not alone as a city, but as a city identified 
with and representative of the Jewish people ; and the word 
simply announces that a bound was to be set to its down-tread- 
ing on the part of the Gentiles ; the ascendancy on the one 
side, and the degradation on the other, were to terminate, but 
in what manner or to what extent was left entirely undecided. 
Manifestly, the treading down might cease by the simple aboli- 
tion of the outstanding distinctions between Jew and Gentile, 



f 

248 THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE. 

and the coalescing of the two on a footing of fraternal love and 
equality, without any collective national reunion of all the 
seed of Israel, (which but partially existed, indeed, when Jeru- 
salem actually was trodden down,) or any restoration of the 
old religious ascendancy and temple-worship. l!^or yet, again, 
when in answer to the question of the disciples, '^ Wilt thou at 
this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?" our Lord 
said, "It is not for you to know the times and the seasons 
which the Father hath put in his own power," was anything 
determined as to the points now under consideration. For 
supposing it to imply that the kingdom was somehow and at 
some period to be restored, the question still remains, in what 
sense ? To Israel in. their natural relation merely to Abraham, 
or as a spiritual seed? separate and alone, or merged with 
believers generally into the Church of God ? in the land of 
Palestine, or diffused throughout the earth ? On these points 
nothing whatever is indicated, while yet they involve the 
whole questions now at issue. It is nothing to say that the 
disciples must have meant by Israel the natural seed and its 
political resuscitation; for through the whole of his earthly 
ministry Jesus was ever using language, and language often 
far more explicit and direct than this, which they did not at 
the time understand. We have no more reason to affirm that 
the sense in which they understood the words of Christ here 
was that also in which he employed them, than it was so when 
he spake of destroying the temple and raising it up in three 
days, (John ii, 19 ;) or, when pointing to his crucifixion he 
said, "And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me." 
John xii, 32. It was the descent of the Spirit alone which 
fitted them for entering properly into the meaning of any of 
our Lord's sayings ; and the utter disappearance from their 
thoughts and language after that event of all reference to a 
national kingdom of Israel, separate from the Church of Christ, 
is quite sufficient to show how great a change their sentiments 
had undergone upon the subject. 

This, however, is not alL It is not merely that in these 
fundamental teachings respecting the character and prospects 
of the Messiah's kingdom, there is the want of any formal and 



THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE. 249 

explicit announcement of either tlie national restoration of 
Israel to Palestine, or the re-establishment there, as in a re- 
ligious center, of a Jewish polity and worship ; but that the 
want exists in connection with much that bore immediately 
upon the subject, and was fitted to call forth, or eyen to de- 
mand some definite announcement regarding it, if such could 
have been made. Besides the careful reserve maintained by 
our Lord respecting it on the occasions already referred to, 
when we turn to his parables, in which he indicated more con- 
cerning the future of his Church and kingdom than he could 
do in his direct discourses, we find him presenting almost every 
possible aspect of its coming fortunes and destiny, yet without 
once conveying an intimation that any of them were to turn 
upon the separate nationality or distinctive privileges of the 
natural Israel. In some of the parables he spoke plainly 
enough of their opposition to the spirit of his kingdom, and of 
the certainty of their losing their place in it, notwithstanding 
that they might be called the children of the kingdom, (Matt, 
xxi, 28-46 ; xxii, 1-14 ; Luke xiii, 6-9 ; xv, 11-32, etc. ;) and 
in others he pointed to the corruptions which, in the course of 
time, should creep into the Church, the troubles and difficulties 
it should have to contend with, the sure progress and enlarge- 
ment it should continue to make, and the final issues of reward 
and condemnation, blessing and cursing, in which it should 
close. (Matt, xiii, 24-50 ; xxv ; Luke xvi ; xviii, etc.) But in 
not one of them is the least hint given of the prospective return 
of the Jewish people to a separate place and position in the 
kingdom ; nor is the distinction ever drawn as one destined to 
exist and work for good, as between people and people, land 
and land. Church and Church. The kingdom always presents 
itself as a unity, alike in nature, privilege, and destiny for its 
real members, with the world at large for the field of its oper- 
ations, divided only in so far as it was to be composed for a 
time of the false and the true, and to have its issues at last in 
evil as well as good. After Christ the apostles touch the dis- 
puted territory on every side, but still with the same studied 
reserve. The Apostle Paul, who had every inducement from 
his official calling and circumstances to speak in the most con- 



250 THE PEOPHETICAL FUTURE OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE. 

ciliatory tone of his countrymen, and who does, in one of Ms 
epistles, treat at considerable length both of their general fall 
and of their future recovery, (Eom. ix-xi,) still utters not a 
word concerning their separate position, their local habitation, 
or their distinctive worship, as if in such respects they were to 
differ when converted from the other members of God's king- 
dom. On the contrary, he represents their return simply as a 
reconciliation with the one spiritual body, from which they are 
for a time cut off; an admission into the community which, 
he plainly testifies, admits of no distinction between Jew and 
Gentile. With him, the Church in the future as well as in the 
present, the Church through all its coming stages on to its 
consummation in glory, precisely as in the parables of Christ, 
is an organic unity marred only by the false admixtures and 
the antichristian apostasy which were for a time to corrupt its 
simplicity. ISTay, the Apostle Peter, the apostle pre-eminently 
of the circimicision, in all his discourses and epistles after the 
day of Pentecost seems equally unconscious of any distinction 
awaiting the race of Israel in God's kingdom ; none excepting 
that of being by privilege the first to receive, and by calling 
the most imperatively bound to spread abroad its blessings. 
This may be said to be the one theme of his first epistle, as 
addressed more immediately to believing Israelites scattered 
throughout the cities of Asia Minor. And in his recorded 
speeches on the day of Pentecost, and after it, how entirely 
does Christ's present reign and his one kingdom of converted 
and saved men take the place of what previously held such 
firm possession of his thoughts, the kingdom of Israel ? The 
change is most remarkable. He appears, in the last interview 
with Jesus, along with the other disciples, making earnest 
inquiry about the restoration of the kingdom of Israel. But 
presently afterward, when the Spirit has descended with his 
enlightening and elevating influences, he proclaims Christ as 
already "exalted to sit on the throne of David," (Acts ii, 30 ;) 
or as it is again expressed, anointed by God, according to the 
terms of the second Psalm, and now meeting the . opposition of 
ungodly men which was there predicted respecting the Lord's 
anointed King. (Chap, iv, 24-28.) And when he points (as he 



THE- PEOPHETICAL FUTURE OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE. 251 

does in chap, iii, 19-21) to the brighter future of the kingdom, 
he represents it as a future which Israel, indeed, by their con- 
version and forgiveness, might do much to help forward, but 
which was by no means to be peculiarly connected with them ; 
which in its progress and consummation was to bring not " the 
restoration of the kingdom to Israel," in the sense formerly 
imagined, but " the restitution of all things spoken of by all 
God's holy prophets since the world began," the one grand 
universal restoration to order and blessedness. The sphere of 
the apostle's vision has now immeasurably widened, and 
though in no respect to the prejudice of the natural Israel, yet 
to the indefinite expansion of their peculiar privileges, and the 
enlargement of the kingdom so as to embrace men of every 
nation, and the round circumference of the globe itself.* 

iL^or in the Apocalypse is there anything that can fairly be 
regarded as bearing a different import. It is true that in one 
passage there, in the sealing vision of chapter vii, the Israelites 
are mentioned, and twelve thousand from each tribe are repre- 
sented as being marked with the seal of God. There is a class 
of interpreters who understand this of the literal Israel, (includ- 
ing even Bengel in former times, and now Auberlen,) and who 
regard the one hundred and forty-four thousand thus made up 
as constituting the elect Church from among the Jews, and the 
multitude without number from every nation, tribe, and 
tongue, in verse 9, as the elect from among the Gentiles. 
This, however, is so utterly at variance with the whole style 
of the Apocalypse, and with the connection of this passage 
itself with what precedes and follows, that the opinion is re- 
jected by many who in other respects adhere to the literal 
style of interpretation. If the natural Israel were really meant, 
then this portion of the book would form an exception to the 
general character of the Apocalypse, which ever represents 
'New Testament relations and prospects under the imagery of 
those of Old Testament times. The temple and its courts 
afterward mentioned, the city where our Lord was crucified, 
Sodom and Egypt, Jerusalem and Babylon, Mount Zion and 
Megiddo, the woman and the whore, are all used symbolically 

* See Appendix I. 



252 THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF THE JEWISH PROPLE. 

to indicate things and parties corresponding to what bore those 
names in earlier times ; and it would be to mar the consistency 
of the apocalyptic style, and introduce the greatest arbitrari- 
ness into its interpretation, if the tribes of Israel were here to 
be taken in their natural sense. N^or would it accord with the 
symbolical import evidently attached to these one hundred and 
forty-four thousand. It is against all probability to suppose, 
on the hypothesis of the literal reading of the passage, that 
precisely twelve thousand of elect ones were to be found in 
each of the tribes specified. And if that improbability could 
anyhow be got rid of, why should only twelve tribes have been 
specified, and not thirteen, the actual number of the tribes ? 
Is it to be conceived that while each one of those twelve should 
furnish twelve thousand, Dan, the tribe omitted, should furnish 
none ? The very omission of this tribe, so as to leave the his- 
torical number, twelve, and the precise squaring of this num- 
ber, so as to make the twelve times twelve, multiplied by a 
thousand, shows that it is not the meaning of the letter we 
have to deal with, but the symbolical representation of a per- 
fect and complete totality. This appears, also, from the object 
of the sealing, which was to stamp with the sure impress of 
Heaven " the servants of the living God," the Lord's people 
generally as being through the divine protection safe from the 
desolations that were to sweep over '' the earth and the sea." 
The sealed are manifestly the representatives of all whom 
divine grace saves from the world-wide judgments contem- 
plated in the vision ; and hence quite naturally appear, during 
the process of the sealing, as made up of so many thousands 
taken from the tribes that historically composed the professing 
Church. Kot less naturally at the close of the process, when 
the act is completed, they present the aspect of a numberless 
multitude gathered from all lands. These reasons, drawn from 
the vision itself, which treats of the sealed company of Israel- 
ites, are still further confirmed, and rendered altogether con- 
clusive by the subsequent reference that is made to the subject. 
In chapter xiv the Lamb is seen standing on Mount Zion with 
one hundred and forty-four thousand, the same sealed company 
" having his name and the name of his Father (so it should be 



THE PEOPHETICAL FUTURE OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE. 253 

read) written on their foreheads." These are described in 
terms that can only be understood of the elect generally, not 
of a mere fraction of the elect. It is said of them that they 
alone could sing the new song, and that they were virgins, 
faithful followers of the Lamb redeemed from among men. 
They are, therefore, the saved ; and appearing as representa- 
tives, forming an ideal number and in a state of ideal perfec- 
tion, they are also jS.tly called the firstfruits unto God and tiie 
Lamb. 

On every account the conclusion seems inevitable, that the 
Israelites in the sealing vision must be understood symbolic- 
ally like all similar terms in the Apocalypse. And as this is 
the only occasion on which they are formally introduced into 
the vision of things to come, it remains certain that the revela- 
tions given to St. John are in perfect accordance on this point 
with what appears generally in IS^ew Testament Scripture. 
As for the view of Hofmann, whom Ebrard and some British 
writers follow, that the woman in chapter xii is simply the 
Jewish Church, and her seed that was to be driven into the 
wilderness the Jewish people in their unbelieving and scat- 
tered condition, it is so palpably opposed to the whole spirit of 
the book and the general object of its prophetic revelations 
that it needs no special consideration. 

It thus appears, that in the teaching of our Lord and his 
apostles there is nothing to favor either the Jewish or the 
semi- Jewish view of the prophetical future. Amid much inci- 
dentally bearing on the subject of Jewish prospects, there is 
still no distinct announcement of the national restoration and 
settlement of the Jewish people in Canaan or of the reinstitu- 
tion of tbeir temple-worship. There is nothing whatever said 
to indicate that such events may be expected in the history of 
the Christian Church, or that anything depends on them for 
the advancement and welfare of Christ's cause in the world. 
Christianity as exhibited and defined for all coming time by 
its divine founder and his servants, acknowledges no such dis- 
tinctions, and is silent as to any such prospects. And as the 
revelations that came by them were for the Church of the New 
Testament of a primal and fundamental character, it were to 



254 THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE. 

invert tlie natural order of things, and unsettle the foundations 
of sound scriptural exposition, if scriptures of an older, and 
from the first only of a subsidiary kind, should be alleged in 
support of an opposite conclusion. From the nature of things, 
they cannot be rightfully alleged. And the feeling of this we 
have no doubt, however vaguely defined and imperfectly un- 
derstood as to the principles on which it rested ; the feeling 
that^ tke fundamental teaching of the 'New Testament was of 
the nature now described, and ought mainly to be regarded, 
was what led the Fathers with one voice, (not excepting such 
as held the personal millennial reign of Christ in Jerusalem,) 
and all Christian writers down to the seventeenth century, to 
reject as chimerical the Jewish expectations both of a terri- 
torial restoration and of a revived Judaism. The feeling itself 
was sound, though it could seldom, perhaps, have given a sat- 
isfactory explanation of the grounds out of which it sprung, or 
made an enlightened defense of them.* 

It is true that Christianity itself sprung out of Judaism, and 
that certain things belonging to it may be not explicitly stated 
and announced, hut presumed on account of the place they had 
in former revelations, and it has been alleged that the obliga- 
tion to observe the weekly Sabbath is of this description, as 
also the right to administer baptism to infants. These both 
rest chiefiy upon grounds and principles definitely settled in 
the Old Testament Scriptures ; and are, it is held, substantially 
on a footing with the supposed distinctions in the prophetic 
future between Jew and Gentile, or the return to a ceremonial 
worship. Our answer to this is very short. If the points now 

* Jerome, in his note on Isa. xi, 10-16, brings out what was undoubtedly the 
prevailing view among patristic writers. He refers, in doing so, to certain Chris- 
tians, whom he calls "our Judaizers," meaning the ancient Millenarians, who con- 
nected the things spoken of in the passage with the second coming of Christ, not 
as he thought should have been done with the first, and also understood them too 
carnally, while still they made no distinction in regard to them between Jew and 
Gentile. And he winds up the whole with this canon of criticism : "Let the wise 
and Christian reader take this rule for prophetical promises, that those things 
which the Jews and ours, not ours, [but] Judaizers, hold to be going to take place 
carnally, we should teach to have already taken place spiritually, lest by occasion 
of fables and inexplicable questions of that sort, (as the apostle calls them,) we 
should be compelled to Judaize." 



THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE. 255 

under discussion were really on a footing with, the things re- 
ferred to, they must have been presumed as continuously sub- 
sisting; they must have been held to be integral parts of 
Christianity as well as of Judaism, and opportunity must have 
been afforded to maintain them at least in substance. But so 
far from this, they were authoritatively set aside, and an insu- 
perable bar laid by God's providence in the way even of their 
formal observance. If anything could mark them as merely 
superficial and temporary distinctions, it was surely this. We 
hold it to be otherwise with the Sabbatical Institution, and the 
admission of children to a covenant-standing. These are no 
Jewish peculiarities or temporary expedients ; they rest on 
primeval grounds of truth and duty, and enshrine principles 
which are interwoven with the constitution of man, and were 
inwrought into the very foundations of the world's history. 

II. This latter point, however, touches closely upon another, 
to which we now proceed. We refer to the typical character 
of the Levitical dispensation. And our position respecting it 
is, that as the Israelitish people with their land and their relig- 
ious institutions were, in what distinctively belonged to them 
under the old covenant, of a typical nature, the whole together 
in that particular aspect has passed away; it has become 
merged in Christ and the Gospel dispensation. 

That this holds good in respect to the religioits institutions 
distinctively and peculiarly belonging to the old covenant was, 
till quite recently, admitted by at least all evangelical Chris- 
tians. The only party known in history to have disputed it 
were the small and obscure Ebionite section of the early here- 
tics, whom all credible historians represent as much more Jew- 
ish than Christian in their views. That men of evangelical 
sentiments in other respects, should in these latter times have 
come to the same belief, maintaining the absolute perpetuity 
of the temple worship, and the certainty of its being again es- 
tablished for the benefit of all Christendom, we can only regard 
as one of those strange and bewildering meteors that occasion- 
ally appear for a little in the theological heavens, and then 
pass away with the occasion that has produced them. The be- 
lief, we are persuaded, has gradually forced itself upon them, 



256 THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE. 

as an iintoward, but necessary result of the false principle of 
prophetical literalism, to which the writers of this school had 
eagerly committed themselves, before they distinctly saw to 
what lengths it would conduct them. The anomalous position 
which they now occupy cannot possibly last. Consistency 
will oblige them either to abandon their Judaism, or renounce 
their evangehsm ; for as we said before, that the evidence for 
the historical Messiah cannot stand with their principle of pro- 
phetical literalism, so we say now, that the fair and grammati- 
cal exegesis of 'New Testament Scripture can as little stand 
with the Judaistic hypothesis that has sprung from it. By the 
one result, the prophetical testimony to the Messiahship of 
Jesus is destroyed, and by the other the foundation is subverted 
of the true relation between type and antitype. 

The full proof of this can only be had by the establishment 
of a sound typological system, based on a close and comprehen- 
sive examination of the writings of both the Old and the I^ew 
Testament. And as we have endeavored to do that elsewhere, 
(in the '' Typology of Scripture,") it is the less necessary to 
say much upon the subject here. Indeed, with plain and un- 
prejudiced minds, the matter admits of a very simple and 
direct solution. We might put it to any one perfectly free to 
express his convictions, if, holding the Judaistic views now un- 
der consideration, he could have taken the part which the 
Apostle Paul did in respect to circumcision and the law? 
Could he have resisted the introduction of these into the 
Church as a matter of life and death? Could he have said as 
Paul did to the Galatians, when he heard, not that they abused, 
'but simply that they used them ; heard merely that they " ob- 
served days, and months, and times, and years," " O foolish 
Galatians, who hath bewitched you that ye should not obey 
the truth ? I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you 
labor in vain ; Behold I, Paul, say unto you that if ye be cir- 
cumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing ?" Or could he have 
declared the proper subjects of the law to have been placed by 
it in a state of bondage, or under a schoolmaster, from which, 
now that faith has come, they were set free ? It is impossible ; 
and a glance into the writings of those whose views we are 



THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE. 257 

now discussing, brings ns acquainted witli quite another lan- 
guage. Hear, for example, Mr. Birks, " They (the legal sacri- 
fices and services connected with them) were taken awaj from 
constituting any part of the true atonement for sin, which our 
Lord was coming to effect by the offering of his own body on 
the tree. As symbols or sacraments, pointing to something 
beyond and far higher than tliemselves, and as adapted for an 
earthly stage of man's being, they were always acceptable, 
when offered in obedience to God's revealed will. But when 
adopted by others, to whom no such command had been given 
or viewed as having inherent efficacy, they were denounced by 
the prophets as dishonorable to God and unavailing to man ; 
and the refusal to impose them upon Gentile converts, when 
the Gospel was sent to them, was only a further and plainer 
testimony against the Jewish perversion of them, as in the 
days of Isaiah and Jeremiah, by pride and self-righteousness." * 
Must not this sound in the ears of a plain reader of Scripture 
somewhat like a travesty of its meaning ? It was certainly not 
thus that Luther understood the matter. How differently did 
he write of the Judaizing spirit of the Galatians and apostles 
of Judaism 1 And Paul himself, did he simply refuse to im- 
pose the Jewish ritual of worship upon the Gentile converts ? 
Or when introduced, did he merely tell them that it was only 
when coupled with pride and self-righteousness the services 
became unavailing, but that as symbols or sacraments they 
were always acceptable? By no means. It is the services 
themselves he condemns ; because in the very observance of 
them, where there was no bond of custom rendering it difficult 
to break them off, he descried the clear sign of an antichristian 
spirit; and the teaching which persuaded the Galatians to 
enter on their observance he affirms to be " another Gospel." 
The very existence of them anywhere he considered a badge 
of servitude, and the things themselves are stigmatized as 
" beggarly elements." During the period appointed for them, 
they held the place only of temporary expedients—" shadows," 
but with Christ's coming the "body" is present, and the 
shadows, as a matter of course, disappear. The whole system 

* "Outliues of Unfulfilled Prophecy," p. 323. 
17 



258 THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE. 

of carnal ordinances, he tells ns in Hebrews, was abolished, 
not because of man's abnse of it, but because of its own weak- 
ness and unprofitahleness / and he shows that they belonged to 
a priesthood and a covenant, which, according to Old Testa- 
ment Scripture itself, were destined to be displaced, and now, 
he expressly declares, were displaced by the higher priesthood 
and the new covenant of Christ. In short, the question as 
treated by the apostle, and as it should be still treated by us, 
is not whether those cardinal ordinances miojht not be observed 
by certain individuals under the Grospel in a Christian Spirit ; 
but whether they were in themselves altogether good ? And 
especially, whether they were adapted to the genius of Chris- 
tianity, and properly fitted to nourish the Christian spirit ; 
To this, the whole tenor of his remarks gives a decided nega- 
tive, and we may say, an unqualified rejection. 

Such are the plain and broad features of the subject, as pre- 
sented by the apostle to the Gentiles, which it is impossible to 
explain away without subverting the very principles of a right 
interpretation of Scripture, But they by no means stand 
alone. Our Lord's declaration to the woman of Samaria, in 
which he said, " The hour cometh, when ye shall neither in 
this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem worship the Father ; but 
the hour cometh and now is, when the true worshiper shall 
worship the Father in spirit and in truth ; for the Father seek- 
eth such to worship him," may be said to involve the princi- 
ple of the whole matter. For it intimates that the distinction 
of places as to religion was on the eve of abolition, and that 
worship rendered at Jerusalem would be no more acceptable 
to God than that given in the most distant regions. But to 
say this, was to ring the knell of the ceremonial law, which 
necessarily fell with the exclusive honors of the one temple and 
the one altar at Jerusalem. It thenceforth ceased to be either 
binding or proper, though still it did not strictly die, but 
rather, like the chrysalis breaking its horny crust and emerging 
into a higher form of life and beauty, was transfigured into 
Christ's form of doctrine, the new law of a spiritual Chris- 
tianity. The same change was involved in the instructive fact 
connected with our Lord's death when the vail of the temple 



1 



THE PHOPIIETICAL FUTUEE OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE. 259 

was rent in twain ; for this declared, as by an impressive sign 
from heaven, that the formal distinctions of the old economy 
were abolished at the very center, and must thenceforth cease, 
even to the furthest extremities. From that moment there 
was no longer in the old sense, a sanctuary, and a holy of 
holies ; the handwriting which had established such divisions 
till the time of reformation was blotted out ; the reformation 
itself had come, and the entire sacrificial system founded on it 
necessarily gave way. The change was still further indicated 
in Christ's declaring at his passover that he had greatly desired 
to eat it with his disciples, because now it was to be fulfilled 
in the kingdom of God, (Luke xxii, 16 ;) that is, the typical 
act it commemorated was to be substantiated by the great re- 
demption whose commemorative rite must henceforth take the 
place of the former. Hence, in still further explanation, the 
Apostle Paul says in 1 Cor. v, 8, " For even Christ our Pass- 
over, is sacrificed for us," (or more exactly. For also our Pass- 
over, Christ has been sacrificed ;) " let us, therefore, keep the 
feast not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and 
wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and 
truth." The meaning obviously is, that the Christian Church 
now possesses through participation in the death and grace of 
Christ, in the real and proper sense, what was only symbolic- 
ally represented in the ancient passover and its accompanying 
feast. In another Epistle also (Col. ii) he expressly affirms, 
that the other most distinctive ordinance of the Old Testament, 
circumcision, has passed into Christian baptism ; so that those 
who through the Spirit have been baptized into the spiritual 
body of Christ, are the circumcised in heart. And if, as the 
apostle in the same place announces, the handwriting of ordi- 
nances was in one mass, as in Christ's body, nailed to the 
cross and taken out of the way, there can be room for but one 
conclusion, namely, that for as many as look to that cross for 
salvation, the old ritual has forever gone ; and we may justly 
say of it with Luther, " Like Moses, it is dead and bnaried, and 
let no man know where its place is." 

But what is thus said of the religion of the old covenant, as 
to its external form, is also said of \hQ people on whom, in their 



260 THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE. 

elect and separate condition it was imposed ; they also in that 
condition possessed a typical character. As a chosen people, 
saved from outward bondage and corruption, and placed in 
covenant-relationship to God, they represented those who, when 
the true redemption came, shonld be delivered from all evil, and 
constituted members of God's everlasting kingdom. So long as 
that typical relation stood, the national distinction between 
Jew and Gentile necessarily continued; although, as the time 
for its abolition drew near, a certain approximation was made 
to its removal, by the dispersion of the Jews through the 
Roman empire, and the constant accessions made to them by 
proselytes from the Gentiles. The way was thus prepared by 
Divine Providence for the change from a typical to an anti- 
typical election ; that is, from an elect seed to an elect society ; 
which began to take full effect as soon as the Christian Church 
assTmied an outstanding existence in the world. From that 
time we hear only of a precedence on the part of the Jew in 
the order of time ; he stood nearest to the kingdom of God, and 
fitly had the first offer of its blessings ; but he had no superi- 
ority in rank, privilege, or destiny. Again and again the 
apostle testifies, that in these respects there was no difference ; 
as in Horn, v, 12, " For there is no difference between the Jew 
and the Greek ; for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that 
call upon him ;" Gal. iii, 28, " There is neither Jew nor Greek, 
there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female, 
(these outward distinctions do not indeed cease, but they are 
nothing in a religious point of view ;) for ye are all one in 
Christ Jesus ;" CoL iii, 11, " Where (that is, in Christ) there is 
neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, bar- 
barian, Scythian, bond nor free, but Christ is all and in all." 
And in Eph. ii, 14, seq., where he speaks more formally of the 
constitution of the Christian Church, " He is our peace who 
hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of 
partition ; having abolished in his flesh the enmity, the law of 
commandments contained in ordinances ; for to make in him- 
self of twain one new man so making peace." Here, plainly, 
the ground of separation or enmity, the law of ordinances, is 
declared to have been removed by Christ for Jew as well as 



THE PROPHETICAL FUTUEE OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE. 261 

Gentile ; it was henceforth no more obligatory upon the one 
than upon the other ; and should have ceased as soon as possi- 
ble to be even observed, in order that the intended oneness of 
the Church might be effected, and converted Gentiles miglit 
feel that they were " no more strangers and foreigners, but fel- 
low-citizens with the saints and of the household of God." 
Hence, in token of this complete fusion of races, and the con- 
sequent merging of the type in the antitype, believers in 
Christ, generally, are called Abraham's seed, (Gal. iii, 29 ;) 
Israelites, (chap, vi, 16 ; Eph. ii, 12 ;) comers unto Mount Zion, 
(Heb. xii, 22 ;) citizens of the free or heavenly Jerusalem, (Gal. 
iv, 26 ;) the circumcision, (Phil, iii, 3.) 

It is to be added, that here also our Lord himself took the 
lead. He began to do so at a comparatively early period in 
his ministry, when on the occasion of the centurion's remark- 
able faith he exclaimed, " Yerily I say unto you, I have not 
found so great faith, no not in Israel. And I say unto you. 
That many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit 
down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of 
heaven ; but the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into 
outer darkness." Matt, viii, 11, 12. So again when he was 
told of his mother and brethren desiring to speak with him, 
" He answered and said unto him that told him. Who is my 
mother ? and who are my brethren ? And he stretched forth 
his hand toward his disciples and said. Behold my mother and 
my brethren 1 For whosoever shall do the will of my Father 
that is in heaven, (or as in Luke, hear the word of God and do 
it,) the same is my brother, and sister, and mother." Here, 
precisely as in the rending of the vail for the ceremonials of 
Judaism, the exclusive bond for the people was broken at the 
center; Christ's very mother and brothers were to have no 
precedence over others, nor any distinctive position in his 
kingdom ; spiritual relations alone should prevail there, and 
the one bond of connection with it for all alike was to be the 
believing reception of the Gospel and obedience to it. Finally, 
the command given the apostles to teach and baptize all 
nations, with no further difference than that they should begin 
at Jerusalem and the Jews, though they were not to rest till 



262 THE PEOPHETICAL FUTUKE OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE. 

they had reached the uttermost part of the earth and preached 
the Gospel to every creature, evidently implied the cessation 
of all outward national distinctions as having any recognized 
place in the kingdom of Chidst. So that the Apostle Paul, in 
the explicit declarations we have quoted from his epistles, only 
carried out, and in a more concrete form expressed, the prin- 
ciple already embodied in our Lord's announcements. 

So far, therefore, as regards Israel's typical character, their 
removed and isolated position is plainly at an end ; all tribes 
and nations are on a footing as to the kingdom of God ; mem- 
bers and fellow-citizens if they are believers in Christ, aliens 
if they are not. But admitting this, may not the natural 
Israel in some other respect have the prospect of a separate 
and peculiar standing in the Church ? It was not simply to be 
a type of the future election that they were anciently sepa- 
rated from the nations, but also that they might possess the 
reality of a present interest in God's love and blessing, and do 
special service for him in the world. Why may it not be so 
again? It may, certainly, and we have no doubt it will in 
some sense, and in so far as may consist with the fundamental 
principles and relations of God's spiritual kingdom. But it 
should be well considered how far in respect to that the his- 
tory of the past itself may warrant us to cany our expecta- 
tions. Besides the typical character of Israel, the only ground 
of distinction that belonged to them, at least as recognized by 
God, was their religious position ; they were the nation that 
held the truth, and as such, stood apart from the idolatrous 
nations of heathendom. But when that distinction virtually 
ceased to exist by the mass of the people abandoning the truth 
and espousing the corruptions of heathenism, the Lord held 
the ground of separation to be abolished, and addressed and 
treated them as heathen. (Isa. i, 1-10 ; Amos ix, T, 8 ; Ezek. 
xvi, xxiii.) Or when it ceased on the other side by heathens 
renouncing their abominations, and entering into the bond of 
the covenant, the same abolition, though in a happier sense, 
took place as to any former distinction. Never, indeed, was 
there anything properly distinctive and peculiar to Israel as a 
people, apart from their standing in the knowledge and faith 



THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE. 263 

of God ; whenever this ground of separation was removed on 
the one side or the other, the distinction itself disappeared ; 
the natural seed of Israel no longer dwelt alone. And justly 
so. For their election of God to a separate place, viewed in 
respect to the time then present, was no act of favoritism ; it 
was simply the appointed means to a great moral end ; and 
when they were either no longer capable of reaching this or no 
longer needed for doing it, it fell into abeyance. 

Such was the state of matters viewed in respect to the past ; 
and would it not be an anomaly of the strangest description, if 
now under the new dispensation, pre-eminent, especially for the 
freedom it has brought from outward restraints and adventi- 
tious distinctions, a kind of division were to be introduced 
which had no existence even under the old ? In the Church 
its-elf of the Old Testament there was no recognized division ; 
members of the stock of Israel formed its main trunk, and 
those who joined it from other tribes became merged in the 
common body ; the separation was simply between this body 
and the heathen world. Shall it be otherwise now? In 
Christian times alone shall there be a recognized and abiding 
distinction within the Church between one portion of it and 
another % Even when the kingdoms of this world have become 
the kingdom of our God and of his Christ shall the Jewish 
nation stand out and apart from the rest ? Were it actually to 
do so, it would not le a continuation or a renewal of the jyast^ 
hut the introduction of an entirely new principle into the 
Church of God. When the kingdoms shall have attained to 
the condition mentioned, they will be relatively in the very 
position occupied of old by Israel itself; they will be one and 
all kingdoms holding the truth; and if converted Israelites 
were still to stand apart from and above them, it would not be 
the same thing that existed under the law, but something 
essentially different — something foreign even to Judaism ; how 
much more, then, to Christianity ? 

The only just expectation respecting the position of the 
Jewish people in their converted state, that alone which is 
warranted by the history of the past or seems in accordance 
with the great principles of Christianity, is not that their sin- 



264: THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE. 

gular and isolated place after tliej liave entered the Church, 
but that their entrance itself there shall enliven and refresh 
her condition. The receiving of them, says the apostle, shall 
be ^' life from the dead." Cut off, as they have been and con- 
tinue to be, for their impenitence and unbelief, they are, so to 
speak, in the condition of an amputated limb — ^lying in the 
bonds of death. And when animated anew by the breath of 
the Spirit, so as to become reunited mth the living body of 
Christ, what else can the effect be than that of sending a fresh 
impulse through every part and member of the body ? How 
far this effect may be produced simultaneously or by successive 
stages, cannot be determined with certainty, and is of no mo- 
ment as regards the general question. The apostle's language 
in. the eleventh chapter of the Romans has been thought to 
imply, that the return of the Jews shall be in a kind of na- 
tional capacity. And such may be its import, although it does 
not materially differ from our Lord's language respecting the 
calling of the gentiles, when he says in Matt, xxi, 43, " There- 
fore I say unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from 
you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof." 
He spoke of the general result in the comprehensive style of 
prophecy, as if the transference were to be begun and com- 
pleted at once ; while yet we know from the history it took 
place in a quite gradual and successive manner. For anything 
we can tell, the reception of the Jews into the bosom of the 
Church may also take place gradually, though it is spoken of 
as a single event. At the same time, from the close intercon- 
nection that subsists among them, it is likely to be accom- 
plished in a much briefer period, after the work of conversion 
has somewhat generally commenced, than in the case of the 
gentiles. And if the present scattered yet separately preserved 
condition of the Jews shall be found, as we may well conceive, 
to hasten forward the blessed consummation, shall there not be 
discovered a sufficient reason for the providence that has so 
kept them apart ? Their preservation certainly has been won- 
derful, and we can scarcely doubt is destined in the issue to 
work out more signally God's great purpose of mercy for the 
world. Their very scattered and peeled condition, bringing 



THE PROPHETICAL FUTUKE OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE. 265 

them into contact with so many nations, and making them 
familiar with so much suffering, may but render them the more 
thoroughly prepared, when the time to favor Zion has come, to 
do the part of the great evangelizers of the world. For through 
them the tongues of all nations would be hallowed to proclaim 
the unsearchable riches of Christ, and speaking from the bosoms 
of such converts, and the depths of such a manifold experience, 
they would assuredly be tongues of fire. "Were Jerusalem but 
effectually reached by the power of the Gospel, every nation 
under heaven would be stirred ; and then indeed " the remnant 
of Jacob would be in the midst of many people as a dew from 
the Lord, as the showers upon the grass, that tarrieth not for 
man, nor waiteth for the sons of men." 

But now, what we have affirmed first of the religion of the 
old covenant, then of the people, we must also affirm of the 
inheritance. This, not less than the other two, as formerly 
stated,* possessed a typical character in relation to Gospel times : 
like them, it passed when these entered into something higher 
and better. And in tracing the connection between the new 
and the old things, Christ and his apostles make no difference 
between this and the two former particulars. Christ himself 
came into the world as the heir of an inheritance, but it was 
the inheritance of the earth, as given up to him to be delivered 
from the bondage of evil, and ultimately glorified. (Psalm ii.) 
Accordingly, one of the first benedictions he pronounced in his 
Sermon on the Mount was an assurance to his people of an 
interest in this large inheritance, ^' Blessed are the meek, for 
they shall inherit the earth." So again in the words he uttered 
in connection with the faith of the centurion, the converts from 
every land are represented as sitting down with Abraham, 
Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of God — sharing ultimately 
in their inheritance, as they had already entered into their 
faith. In like manner the Apostle Paul speaks of believers in 
Christ, not only as children of Abraham, but also as heirs with 
him according to the promise, (Gal. iii, 29,) having a joint 
heritage, as well as a common standing with Abraham. He 
even designates Abraham " the heir of the World," (Rom. iv, 

* See Part I, chap. vi. 



266 THE PEOPHETICAL FUTUEE OE THE JEWISH PEOPLE. 

13,) wliich can only be explained bj his identifying Canaan 
with what it typically represented, in the same way that Christ 
is called Abraham's seed, (Gal. iii, 16,) since in the immediate 
offspring the eye of faith contemplated the ultimate child of 
promise. In Hebrews xi, the patriarchs themselves are identi- 
fied in their prospects of a futnre inheritance with believers in 
Christ ; they are described as in their expectations overshoot- 
ing the nearer possessions literally contained in the word of 
promise, and looking for the everlasting inheritance. And 
this inheritance, described by the Apostle Peter as the destined 
portion alike of converted Jews and gentiles, (1 Peter i, 4,) is 
also by him identified with the new heavens and the new earth, 
which the prophet Isaiah had held ont in prospect to the Chnrch 
of the Old Testament as the final resting-place fi-om all their 
troubles. (2 Peter iii, 13.) 

It appears, therefore, that the typical character which at- 
tached to the people and the religion of the old covenant, at- 
tached also to the inheritance, the land of Canaan ; and that 
the transition to Gospel times is represented as effecting the 
same relative change in respect to this as to the others. It is 
true here, as of the people and of the religion, that the typical 
bearing was not the only one ; immediate ends of an important 
kind were connected with the possession of the land, though 
they were never more than partially accomplished. But the 
typical bearing is the relation in which it stands to Gospel 
times ; a relation which it holds equally with the people whose 
heritage it was, and the ceremonial worship they observed. 
How, indeed, could it have been otherwise ? The land was in 
a manner the common basis of the people and the worship — 
the platform on which both stood, and in connection with which 
the whole of their religious observances and their national his- 
tory might be said to move. To except this, therefore, from 
the typical territory, and withdraw it from the temporary things 
which were to pass to something higher and better in Christ, 
were to suppose an incongruity in the circumstances of ancient 
Israel which we cannot conceive to have existed, and could 
only have led to inextricable confusion. Yiewed in the light 
in which we have presented it, all is of a piece ; a common 



THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE. 267 

principle pervades the relations of Old Testament times. The 
seed of Israel, as an elect people, placed under covenant with 
God, represented the company of an elect Church, redeemed 
from the curse of sin, that they might live forever in the favor 
and blessing of Heaven : and when the redemption came, the 
representation passed into the reality. In like manner the 
religion of symbolical feasts and ordinances, which was imposed 
upon the people of the covenant, shadowed forth under various 
aspects the realities and consolations of the Gospel ; and when 
these were introduced, the other, as a matter of course, passed 
away — ^the type became merged in the antitype. So once 
again the inheritance which was given for a possession to the 
typical seed, and was to be a visible pledge of God's favor, so long 
as they fulfilled the obligations of the typical calling and wor- 
ship, served for the time to image the final portion and destiny 
of the redeemed, but now it also through the Gospel has been 
supplanted by the earnest and expectation of a world where all 
is pure and blessed. Here, as in other respects, the past links 
itself with the future, as the germ of a great and abiding reality, 
that was in due time to be developed. And precisely as the 
seed of Abraham was seen by inspired men perpetuating itself 
in the flock of Christ, and David in Christ himself, so are Abra- 
ham's inheritance and David's kingdom to be regarded as hav- 
ing a prolonged and expanded existence in those of Christ and 
his people. There is the same principle in both. And, as a 
necessary result, the former relation of the Israelites to the land 
of Canaan affords no ground, for expecting its reoccupation by 
them after their conversion to the faith of Christ, no more than 
for expecting that the handwriting of ordinances shall then be 
restored, or the relations of the ancient world, generally, shall 
return to their old channels. 

However viewed, therefore, the expectations of which we 
have been treating seem destitute of any solid foundation. . 
They are to some extent at variance with the fundamental 
principles of the divine administration in general, and es- 
pecially at variance with the spirit and genius of Christianity. 
The fulfillment of them would constitute, not an advance to a 
more perfect state of things, but a retrogression to what was 



268 THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE. 

essentially imperfect. The local temple, which formed the 
center of the old religion, with its holy persons, and places, and 
seasons, bespoke in its very nature imperfection ; since it im- 
plied, in respect to other persons, and places, and seasons, a rela- 
tive commonness or pollution ; so that the prophets themselves 
anticipated a time when it would be supplanted by something 
higher and better. (Jer. iii, 17.) The same kind of imperfec- 
tion was inseparably connected with the idea of an elect people 
and a holy land ; all lying beyond the hallowed circle being 
necessarily regarded as either absolutely or relatively impure. 
Perfection can come only as this circle widens and embraces 
the field of humanity in its compass. It began in a measure 
with the believing Jews of the dispersion, carrying with them 
into heathen lands the lamp of divine truth, and preparing the 
way far and wide for the day of Gospel light. More properly, 
however, it began with the incarnation of Christ, the one com- 
plete, living temple of Godhead ; and it grows as the Holy 
Spirit that is in him finds for itself a home in the bosoms of 
believing men. Wherever such are, there also are living 
temples, surpassing in real glory the magnificent but lifeless 
fabric that stood upon the heights of Zion. And it is the grand 
aim of Christianity to increase and multiply these living temples 
of the Spirit, so that they may be found in every part of the 
habitable globe. Its tendency is not to centralize, but to dif- 
fuse abroad ; not externally to communicate an impression of 
sanctity by the mere touch of particular localities and the ob- 
servance of stated forms, but internally to sanctify men by the 
Spirit of holiness, and through them, as vessels of the Spirit, 
to sanctify all places and all times. The true ideal of Chris- 
tianity is realized only in proportion as this regenerative process 
is accomplished ; and it were obviously a retrograde movement, 
if its free and expansive energies should be repressed by the 
local restraints of some particular region, or by having its more 
select agencies drawn from but a fragmentary section of the 
human family. 

In what has hitherto been said, we have confined our atten- 
tion in the first instance to the essential nature of Christianity, 
then to the typical character of Judaism, with scarcely any 



THE PEOPHETICAL FUTUKE OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE. 269 

direct reference to the prophetical portions of Old Testament 
Scripture, beyond the terms of the Abrahamic covenant. It is 
to this more especially that the Apostle Paul refers when he 
treats of the future of the Jewish people in the epistle to the 
Romans. But neither in what he says regarding it, nor in the 
covenant itself, when rightly understood, is there anything to 
imply the restoration of the seed of Israel to a fature and per- 
manent possession of the land of Canaan. In reality it was 
never meant to secure, in any sense, the possession of Canaan 
to more than a select portion of Abraham's seed ; as the suc- 
cessive limitations made among his immediate offspring to the 
more peculiar blessings of the covenant clearly showed. It 
settled at length upon the children of Jacob, but only on the 
supposition (never more than partially verified) of their being 
collectively children of faith, for otherwise they could not have 
been entitled to any blessing.* And, as thus ultimately de- 
fined and fixed, it was in respect to the possession no doubt, as 
well as other things, everlasting ; not, however, as regards the 
form^ but simply as regards the substance of its provisions. 
The form necessarily underwent a change with the coming of 
Christ, from whom everything in the future connected with 
God's kingdom takes its shape and character. He was himself 
pre-eminently the Seed promised in the covenant, but at the 
same time unspeakably more than the seed primarily desig- 
nated; it was now a seed embracing alike the divine and 
human, and including as many as partake of the life of God. 
In correspondence with this, the possession becomes also un- 
speakably more than the old land of Canaan — it embraces the 
whole extent of a recovered and renovated world. And where- 
ever there is found a soul linked in vital union with Christ, 
there also are found the essential characteristics of Abraham's 
seed, and a title to Abraham's inheritance. 

III. But we come now to glance at what are more strictly 
the prophetical parts of Scripture, and we here advance the 
proposition that they contain nothing which, taken according 
to the real nature and intent of prophecy, is at variance with 
the conclusions already arrived at. That they contain many 

* See Part I, chap. iii. 



270 THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE. 

passages whicli formally announce the re-establisliment and 
perpetual existence of everything distinctively Jewish, admits 
of no doubt. But when read in accordance with the funda- 
mental principles of prophetical interpretation, the true import 
is in perfect conformity with the views we have unfolded. 

1. For, in the first place, by one of the most essential of 
these principles, the predictions of the future continually took 
the form and image of the present or the past.* Partly from 
the mode of revelation by vision, and partly from the necessary 
laws of the human mind, which the Spirit in his supernatural 
communications does not overbear, but leaves in free and un- 
fettered exercise, there was no possibility of avoiding such a 
leaning upon history in the anticipations of prophecy. The 
new can only be conceived of under the aspect of the old ; and 
by the aid of known relations the mind is obliged to feel its 
way to such as may belong to other states and conditions of 
existence. Of necessity, therefore, the form in such cases is 
always defective, and an accomplishment that should answer 
the description according to the letter would, in the nature of 
things, be impracticable. This holds as well of the l^ew Testa- 
ment delineations of our still undeveloped future, as of the Old 
Testament dehneations of what has now become our present or 
past. Take, for example, some of our Lord's descriptions of 
the coming bliss and glory of his people. Luke xii, 37, " Blessed 
are those servants whom the Lord, when he cometh, shall find 
watching ; verily I say unto you, that he shall gird himself, 
and make them to sit down to meat, and will come forth to 
serve them ;" xxii, 29, " And I appoint unto you a kingdom, 
as my Father hath appointed unto me ; that ye may eat and 
drink at my table in my kingdom, and sit on thrones, judging 
the twelve tribes of Israel ;" Rev. iii, 21, " To him that over- 
cometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also 
overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne," etc. 
Of these, and all similar descriptions of what is to come, no 
one needs to be told that they present only a shadowy repre- 
sentation drawn from known objects and relations upon earth, 
not the very form and image of the things hereafter to be real- 

* See pp. 148, 160, seq. 



THE PEOPHETICAL FUTURE OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE. 271 

ized. Understood otherwise, they would neither give assurance 
of the kind of felicity that is fitted to satisfy the desires of be- 
lievers, nor would they be properly consistent with each other. 
And if such be the case with the prospective delineations of the 
Gospel, how much more must it have been so with those which 
were given in the very age of shadows and symbols ? Rela- 
tively, the people of those times were in the condition of chil- 
dren with respect to the better things to come, and these must 
either have been wrapped in absolute darkness to their view, or 
unfolded to them in a childish manner. In this form alone 
could they have formed any distinct idea of the coming future ; 
and whatever imperfections may have cleaved to the form, it 
still was what alone could enable persons in their circumstances 
to obtain some apprehension of the reality. 

Hence, as the dispensations of God toward his people va- 
ried, and assumed in successive periods new aspects and rela- 
tionSj prophecy also changed the form of the representations. 
Instances have already been given of this, (Part I, chap, iv,) 
and we glance here only at some of the general features. The 
patriarchal age was distinguished by the Lord's condescending 
to select for the world's good certain more peculiar instruments 
and channels of blessing, and prophecy then spake only of the 
general relations amid which the purpose to bless should be 
carried into eifect. In the times of David and Solomon, when 
the kingdom, after many struggles, attained to a united and 
flourishing condition, the prophetic future assumed the aspect 
of a king contending and conquering ; a kingdom in Israel 
bearing down all opposition, and gathering people of every 
name under its sway ; and a blessed people, having their inter- 
ests inseparably bound up with the person and fortunes of Him 
whom God had set upon the throne. But after the kingdom 
lost its unity, and the royal house of David was shorn of its 
glory, and the people themselves became peeled and scattered, 
then the Spirit of prophecy, sighing amid the mournful desola- 
tions, yet confident of the grace and glory still to be revealed, 
spake of this under the image of the removal of existing evils, 
of the reunion of Ephraim and Judah, of a reviving of the 
splendor of David's house, of the resuscitation even of David 



272 THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE. 

Mmself, to wield again the scepter in God's name over a blessed 
heritage, and of the regathering of the scattered flock to share 
in the peace and glory of his reign. How else could they have 
formed definite notions of the nature of the good in prospect ? 
The existing evils must appear to be supplanted by the oppo- 
site good. Even the sorest of all their calamities, that which 
befell them at the overthrow of their beautiful city and temple, 
only served, in the hands of Ezekiel, for materials to picture 
out a restored community more perfect and glorious than the 
past, under the image of a temple and city, manifestly ideal in 
their whole structure and arrangements, yet admirably con- 
trived to give assurance of a coming future that should totally 
eclipse the brightest era of the past. In Daniel a still further 
stage was reached in the development of the prophetic future, 
and in accordance with his peculiar position an altogether dif- 
ferent form was given to it. Placed by Providence at a heathen 
court, it is from the midst of the worldly interest, not from 
that of the covenant-people, that his prophetic outline of the 
future is given. It unfolds the relations between the king- 
doms of this world and the kingdom of God, but contains noth- 
ing of the more internal relations growing out of the times of 
Abraham, or Jacob, or even David. And when he comes to 
designate the members of the divine kingdom, the character- 
istics are drawn from the broadest ground. They are simply 
" the saints of the Most High ;" and the kingdom itself, so far 
from being confined within the little bounds of Canaan, com- 
prehends all people, and nations, and languages, under the 
whole heaven.* 

Taking thus the hue and aspect of the past, foretelling things 
to come under the form and image of things wliich have al- 
ready appeared, prophecy becomes comparatively simple as to 
its mode of interpretation and its leading results, if only (for 
there lies the chief difficulty) we can throw ourselves back to 
the position of those who disclosed it, and conceive of their rela- 
tion to the future of the Gospel dispensation, as we must do of 
our own relation to the still future dispensation of glory. Situ- 
ated as the prophets generally were, it was quite natural, and 

* See Appendix K. 



THE PKOPHETICAL FUTURE OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE. 273 

in a sense necessary, that they should speak of the better things 
to come in language and imagery derived from such as were 
known and familiar to their minds, and especially that when 
disorder and confusion entered into the state of things pre- 
viously settled, they should announce the recovery of what was 
lost, and the re-establishment on surer foundations of what had 
given, way. This principle in fact pervades all their represent- 
ations, and must be applied to one part as well as to another 
of the materials of which their representations are composed. 
The prophets themselves make no difference. They speak as 
distinctly in some places of a separate nationality for the cove- 
nant-people, as in others of the healing of what was internally 
disordered ; of the erection of the temple, and the joyful cele- 
bration of its worship, as of a restoration to the land of Ca- 
naan and a rebuilt Jerusalem. It must ever appear arbitrary 
to separate between representations which are manifestly one 
in kind, and, if either intelligible or consistent, can only be 
found so by being based on a common principle. To hold by 
the form in one part, and let it go in another, is to introduce 
absolute confusion, and surrender the prophetic field to the 
caprice of individual feeling or the shifting currents of popular 
opinion. Indeed, on any other principle than that we have 
laid down, the prophetic testimony respecting the future of 
Israel would be of the most contradictory and discordant na- 
ture ; for sometimes this future is exhibited under the form of 
a removal merely of the disorders that had crept into tlie old 
constitution of things, and at other times of the removal of this 
itself, on account of its inherent imperfections, in order that 
something better may take its place. (Jer. xxxi, 31 ; Isa. Ixv, 17; 
Ixvi, 1^ ; Haggai ii, 7.) In one class of representations the 
nations are spoken of as going to Jerusalem to join in the 
restored feasts and ritual of Judaism; (Isa. Ixvi, 23 ; Zech. xiv ;) 
in another, the distinctive peculiarities of Judaism and the 
temple service are described as no longer distinctive but every- 
where diffused, as when Egypt and Assyria are placed on 
a footing as to covenant privileges with Israel ; (Isa. xix, 
21-25 ;) or, when the sacredness of the ark of the Lord is 

said to be shared in common by all Jerusalem (Jer. iii, 

18 



274: THE PKOPHETICAL FUTUKE OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE. 

16, 17 ;)* or, when the most peculiar rites of the temple, such 
as the altar service, or the offering of incense, is connected 
with other countries, and even every region of the earth. (Isa. 
xix, 19 ; Mai. i, 11.) Ezekiel, writing when the heart of faith 
is prostrated b j the fall of the house of God, seeks to reanimate 
it with the hope of a temple and a city incomparably more 
glorious and perfect than what had been lost ; while John, liv- 
ing when the temple and all its forms were superseded, per- 
ceives no temple in the consummate glory of the 'New Jerusa- 
lem, with which his visions terminate. All, indeed, perfectly 
natural and intelligible, if they are understood to be merely the 
varying and imperfect forms under which men, guided by the 
Spirit of God, endeavored to body forth from their several 
points of view the better future ; but full only of discord and 
confusion, if their delineations are to be ruled by a prosaic 
literalism. 

In this also we have a satisfactory answer to the demand 
that is often made for the same kind of events in the prophetic 
future of Israel, as have appeared in their past history. Both, 
it is alleged, must be on the same level, equally outward and 
palpable in the one case as in the other. If so, then the future 
in God's kingdom must itself be on the same level with the 
past ; there must be no rise, no progressive development ; 
Christianity must move in the same sphere with Judaism ; the 
history of Providence, instead of ever advancing forward, must 
turn back to its old channels, and its movements in that direc- 
tion must even have been more clearly descried by ancient 
seers in the dusky twilight, than by apostles and prophets in 
the bright noon-day of the Gospel. To affirm such conclu- 
sions is to place the word of God in antagonism to nature and 
reason, and to set one part of its revelations in antithesis to 
another. For the prophecies that were to have their fulfillment 
in the Gospel history itself, dying, so to speak, on the boundary- 
line between the old and the new in God's dispensations ; for 

* The explanation by the Rabbinical interpreter Jarchi of this passage is strik- 
ing, and shows how far even he had obtained an» insight into its real meaning : 
" For your whole community shall be holy, and I will dwell among you as if you 
were yourselves the ark of the covenant " — a spiritual and godly people now tak- 
ing the place of the temple and the most sacred part of its furniture. 



THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE. 275 

such prophecies, a considerable degree of correspondence in the 
very form, might justly be expected between the terms of the 
prediction and the manner of its accomplishment, as is often, 
though not uniformly, found to be the case in the recorded 
fulfillments of the Gospels. But when the work of Christ was 
finished, a higher class of relations entered ; the divine admin- 
istration rose greatly beyond its former level ; and in so far as 
prophecy pointed to what should thereafter take place, we 
should no more expect to see it fulfilled after the precise letter 
of its announcements, than we should expect the fmit of 
genius in mature years to retain the exact type of its early 
promise. 

2. Another essential principle in prophetical interpretation 
is the primary and pre-eminent regard that is ever had in it to 
the moral element. This appears particularly in two ways.. 
It appears first in those predictions which refer to difierent 
nations and people, by pointing more especially to the persons 
or communities composing them, the real subjects of moral 
treatment, rather than to the territories they occupied. It ap- 
pears again in the conditional character of those predictions 
which contain promises of good things to come, these always 
implying a corresponding spiritual condition on the part of 
those in whom they are to be fulfilled, and a failure or modifi- 
cation, according to the nature of that condition.^ Now, it is 
absolutely impossible to carry out this principle in the inter- 
pretation of many of those prophecies which refer to the future 
of the Jewish people. For in these prophecies Israel does not 
stand alone, but in connection with the surrounding nations, 
who represented in dififerent degrees the ungodliness and en- 
mity of the world, as Israel was called to represent the truth 
and holiness of God. But in the light in which those nations 
were contemplated in prophecy, they are gone; as distinct and 
separate communities, maintaining an ambitious rivalry with 
the covenant-people, they are utterly extinguished ; their very 
existence is numbered among the things that were. How, 
then, can the prophecies, which speak of either Israel's resto- 
ration to the land of Canaan, or their forming in that land the 

* See Part I, chap. iv. 



276 THE PROPHETICAL FUTUEE OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE. 

religious center of a blessed world, be fulfilled according to the 
letter ? It is not the naked fact respecting Israel, of which the 
prophecies speak, but of this as imbedded amid relations de- 
rived from their old historical position. Their return, for ex- 
ample, to their ancient possessions, is described as being made, 
sometimes with the help and sometimes to the confusion and 
overthrow of those who formerly afflicted them : " They shall 
fiy upon the shoulders of the Philistines toward the west ; they 
shall spoil them of the east together ; they shall lay their hand 
upon Edom and Moab, and the children of Ammon shall obey 
them." Isa. xi, 14. "And this man [Messiah] shall be our 
peace, when the Assyrian shall come into our land ; and when 
He shall tread in our palaces, then shall we raise against Him 
seven shepherds and eight principal men." Micah v, 5. " In 
that day will I raise up the tabernacle of David that is fallen, 
and close up the breaches thereof; and I will raise up his ruins, 
and I will build it as in the days of old ; that they may possess 
the remnant of Edom." Amos ix, 11, 12. To the same class 
belong also such passages as Zech. xiv, 16-19, and Isa. xix, 
23-25, referred to under the last head ; for the Egypt and As- 
syria spoken of as one with Israel is manifestly not the mere 
territories, but the people or kingdoms that had their seat of 
empire there ; these it is who are represented as undergoing at 
last an entire change of relationship toward Israel, laying aside 
their hostility and joining her in brotherly communion. But the 
people mentioned in all these passages have disappeared from 
the stage of history ; and neither the restoration itself of Israel, 
nor the events growing out of it, can be understood according to 
the letter of the description ; in that sense considerable portions 
of the prophetic Scriptures can have no proper fulfillment. 
And why, then, should the others be supposed to have ? Why 
not understand them generally in the sense of prophetic delin- 
eations written in the language and imagery supplied by his- 
tory ? It is undeniable, as we have already shown,* that prophe- 
cies were sometimes written thus, even such as found their ful- 
fillment under the old dispensation ; and it is in accordance 
with the nature of things to suppose that what was occadonaUy 

* See p. ITO. 



THE PROPHETICAL FUTUBE OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE. 277 

done in predictions relating to Old Testament times would 
be constantly done in those which foretold the better things of 
the New. For in the one case it miglit have been dispensed 
with, bnt in the other it could not ; here there was no alterna- 
tive ; the prophets were obliged to avail themselves of the 
former things to depict those that were to come. 

The prominence given in prophecy to the moral element in 
the other respect mentioned confirms still further this result. 
For the prophecies now under consideration are all of the na- 
ture of promises of good things to Israel ; and these God inva- 
riably hung, to a certain extent, upon the spiritual condition 
of the subjects of them ; and the determinate thing in them 
was not the precise mode and measure of the accomplishment, 
but rather the purpose of God to do good to his people, and to 
what extent they might look for his blessing. But the proper 
result was continually marred by their short-comings and sins ; 
and some even of the most explicit prophecies of this descrip- 
tion, referring to the return of Israel from their first dispersion, 
and their future prosperity in the land, prophecies that should 
have been fulfilled before the coming of Christ, had never more 
than a very partial accomplishment. The prediction in Jere- 
miah, xxiv, 6-7, may be specified as an example, since the Lord 
there says of the portion of the Jews that had been carried cap- 
tive to Babylon, as contradistinguished from the other portion 
that still remained in Judea, that he would " bring them back 
to their land, and would build them, and not pull them down, 
and plant them, and not pluck them up." There are various 
prophecies of a like, nature in Zechariah, as at chapter i, 16, 
and ii, 4, where, after the captivity had in part returned, the 
Lord declared that he had " returned to Jerusalem with mer- 
cies," that it should be " inhabited as towns without walls for 
the multitude of men and cattle therein," that he would him- 
self be " a wall of fire round about, and the glory in the midst." 
So again, in chapter viii, he renews the declaration, that he 
" was returned unto Zion, and would dwell in the midst of Je- 
rusalem ; and Jerusalem should be called a city of truth, and 
the mountain of the Lord of Hosts, the holy mountain." That 
these and other predictions of a like kind intimated what the 



278 THE PEOPHETICAL FUTUKE OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE. 

Lord was ready to do for the people, and what should have 
been found in the immediate future, seems quite plain ; but 
the want of a proper sanctification on their part rendered the 
full accomplishment impossible ; as in other cases, so also here, 
the natural had to bend to the moral — ^the promised good could 
only be so far realized as the people were prepared and fitted 
to receive it. In other words, it was not the natural Israel 
merely as such, but these as the seed of God, the Church, to 
whom the promises were made ; and the natural element in 
the thing promised necessarily had its amount as well as form 
determined by Israel's relation to the Church, and God's dis- 
pensations toward her. Even in legal times, it never was more 
than a secondary point, whether Canaan was to be the home of 
the seed of Jacob ; what alone gave it importance, was its 
selection as the chosen theater of the one acceptable worship, 
the religious center of the world. And when no longer needed 
for this, what should we expect, but that the natural element 
in the prophecies referred to should fall yet more into abey- 
ance, and the moral, which has to do with the spiritual reali- 
ties and abiding relations, alone become prominent ? 

"We may say, therefore, in regard to the entire class of proph- 
ecies, to which the above examples belong, that from their 
very nature their fulfillment, according to the letter and form, 
could not be expected to be more partial ; but as to the sub- 
stance it becomes complete, though only when the form has 
passed away. During the time that the temple and Jerusalem 
stood, and formed the center of the divine kingdom and wor- 
ship, the predictions, which were of the nature of promises, 
received a measure of fulfillment in the case of the true cove- 
nant-people to whom alone they properly referred. But from 
the moment that Christ was glorified, as the temple and Jeru- 
salem lost their original character — as the Jerusalem and the 
temple, which thenceforth constituted the real habitation of 
God and the seat of worship, rose heavenward with its Divine 
Head, (Gal. iv, 26 ; Rev. xxi, 2,) it is in connection with that 
higher region that we are to look for what yet remains to be 
fulfilled of the predictions. So long as God's dwelling-place 
needed to have an outward and local position upon earth, it 



THE PEOPHETICAL FUTUEE OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE. 279 

continued, according to the word of promise, to have it. He 
did, as he said, encamp round about it, drew toward it from 
every quarter his sincere and faithful worshipers, and rendered 
it a fountain of holiness and peace to the children of the cove- 
nant. And when Christ personally appeared, and brought in 
redemption, not for the sins of Israel alone, but for those of 
the whole world, while he did not take from his people a cen- 
ter-place of meeting and fellowship with God, he yet shifted 
its position ; he raised it from earth to heaven ; and instead of 
saying, "You shall find me here," or " Go to meet me there," 
he said, " Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the 
world, and to the uttermost bounds of the earth." So that 
Zion, considered in its higher or moral sense, as the seat of the 
divine government, is always a holy mountain, and Jerusalem, 
viewed as the center of true worship and hallowed influences, 
abides still, and in higher perfection than before. Beyond the 
reach of violence or corruption, it cannot be removed or 
plucked up forever ; and the word stands fast, which assured 
the covenant people of a perpetual residence of God in the 
midst of them, a home of safety and a fountain of blessing. 

3. Another, and quite essential principle of prophetical 
interpretation, as of every species of writing which is accord- 
ant with truth, is that the mode of understanding its declara- 
tions must involve nothing absolutely incredible or contrary to 
the nature of things. Under the terms now indicated we do 
not mean what may be designated natural impossibilities ; for 
the whole work of grace, like the birth of Isaac and of Christ, 
is of that sort ; it is above nature, and in such a sense contrary 
to it, that if the laws and forces of nature alone were to oper- 
ate, it might justly be pronounced impossible. To the heart 
of faith such things are not incredible, because it takes into 
account the supernatural grace of God, which does what 
nature is alike incompetent and unwilling to do, by bringing 
to its aid a truly divine energy. But there are limits even to 
the operations of grace, and of the power of God generally. 
There are things of a providential kind, which we may say 
God cannot do, as we say, in respect to his moral character, 
that he cannot lie. And no interpretation of the propliecies 



280 THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE. 

can. be sound, wHcli, when fairly and consistently applied, 
would involve the belief of such things being brought to pass. 
l^ow some things of this description, in our opinion, have 
already been specified in the course of our remarks as flowing 
from that style of interpreting the prophecies against which 
we contend. Such are the self-contradictory statements, which 
on this literal style are found in them, (noticed at p. 94, seq.,) 
since both parts cannot be literally verified ; and such, also 
those, which presuppose the existence of states and communi- 
ties that have altogether ceased to exist. These are spoken of, 
not in the general sense of lands or countries, but of corporate 
societies and distinct races, standing in a known and definite 
relation to the covenant-people. In this respect the old condi- 
tion of things referred to in the prophecies is gone, and gone 
irretrievably. But there are other things of the same nature 
mentioned of the covenant-people themselves. Thus the proph- 
ecy in Zech. xii, which is commonly pressed as one of the 
clearest proofs of the permanently separate condition and res- 
toration of the Jews in the latter days, implies the existence 
of the old organization also as to families ; the family of David 
is represented as mourning apart, and the families of I^athan, 
of Levi, and of Shimei. In other prophecies of a like nature 
the priests and Levites are mentioned apart, even the children 
of Zadok, as contradistinguished from the other priestly fami- 
lies, and every tribe in its own order, (Isa. Ixvi, 21 ; Mai. iii, 3 ; 
Ezek. xliv, 15 ; xlviii.) But all such internal distinctions have 
long since perished ; the course of Divine Providence has been 
such as to sweep them entirely away. And from the very 
nature of the case, such distinctions, when once lost, can never 
be recalled ; the revival of them would involve, not the resus- 
citation of an old, but the creation of a new state of things. 
So long as any prophecies were depending for their fulfillment 
on the separate existence of tribes and families in Israel, the 
distinction between them was preserved ; and so also were the 
genealogical records which were needed to attest the fulfill- 
ment. These prophecies terminated in the Son of Mary, the 
Branch of the house of David, and the Lion of the tribe of 
Judah ; but with him this and all other old things ceased — a 



THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE. 281 

new era, independent of sucli outward and formal differences^ 
began. Hence we find the apostle discharging all from giving 
heed to endless genealogies, as no longer of any avail in the 
Church of God ; and the providence of God shortly after sealed 
the word by scattering their genealogies to the winds, and fus- 
ing together in one undistinguishable, inextricable mass, the 
surviving remnants of the Jewish family. 'Now, prophecy is 
not to be verified by halves ; it is either wholly true, in the 
sense in which it ought to be understood, or it is a failure. 
And since God's providence has rendered the fulfillment of 
the parts referred to manifestly impossible on the literal princi- 
ple of interpretation, it affords conclusive evidence, that on 
this principle such prophecies are misread. In what it calls 
men to believe, it does violence to their reason ; and it commits 
the word of God to expectations which never can be properly 
realized. 

The ground on which these remarks are made, holds also in 
regard to other predictions ; for example, to that of Zech. xiv, 
16, which speaks of all nations going up to worship every year 
at Jerusalem, and to keep the feast of the tabernacles ; to that 
of Isa. Ixvi, 23, which affirms the same respecting the new 
moons and even the sabbaths; to that of Ezekiel, chap, 
xl-xlviii, which sketches a temple and city and a new distri- 
bution of the land, which by no conceivable adjustments can 
be brought within the bounds of the possible. It was never 
intended to be so ; its aim was to unfold by means of the old 
external symbols and relations, freshly arranged and expanded, 
certain great truths and elevating prospects, (as we have shown 
in our Commentary on that part of Ezekiel ;) and similar ends 
were aimed at in all the other prophecies of a like description. 
By being so viewed, it is true, they are rendered less specific 
in their meaning, and we can derive little information from 
them regarding the precise arrangements and forms of things 
in the later periods of the Christian dispensation. But then, 
it never was the design of prophecy to give us such informa- 
tion ; this is the province of history, not of prophecy. It is 
the part of the latter to inculcate great principles, to lay open 
the springs of God's moral government, to awaken earnest 



282 THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE. 

longings and expectations regarding the good in prospect for 
the people of God, and indicate the greater lines and more 
marked characteristics of those spiritual movements on which 
the destinies of the Church and the world are to turn. These 
are its leading objects ; but for subordinate details of provi- 
dential arrangements, we have no warrant to look to it, 
unless it be in exceptional cases, such as times of peculiar dark- 
ness or great emergency, to which they have usually been 
confined. 

4. "We shall refer only further — ^not to an additional princi- 
ple of prophetical interpretation, strictly so called, but to a 
particular prophecy — ^for the purpose of giving what we con- 
ceive its true interpretation. "We have already done so, indeed, 
in another place, (the " Typology of Scripture," vol. i, p. 416,) 
but must present it anew here, on account of the bearing of 
the passage on the subject before us. It is the prophecy in 
Isa. lix, 20, 21, which, as applied in the eleventh chapter of 
the epistle to the Komans, has been supposed incapable of ex- 
planation, excepting on grounds that necessarily involve at 
least the restoration of the Jewish people. " And so," says 
the apostle, that is, after the fullness of the Gentiles has come 
in, and the blindness is again removed from Israel, " all Israel 
shall be saved : as it is written, There shall come out of Zion 
the deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob ; 
for this is my covenant unto them, when I shall take away 
their sins." One not of the least diflSculties connected with 
this passage is the change which the apostle makes on the 
words of the original. In the prophet, it is to Zion that the 
Hedeemer was to come, not out of it ; and he was to come, 
not to turn away ungodliness from Jacob, but " to those that 
turn from transgression in Jacob." Such deviations from the 
words and scope of the original have appeared to some so ma- 
terial, that they regard the apostle here, not so properly inter- 
preting an old prediction, as uttering a prediction of his own, 
clothed as nearly as possible in the familiar language of an 
ancient prophecy. A manifestly untenable view; for how 
could we, in that case, have vindicated the apostle from the 
want of godly simplicity, using, as he mu^t then have done, 



THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE. 283 

his accustomed fornmla for prophetical quotations (" As it is 
written ") only to disguise and recommend an announcement 
properly his own ? 

We repudiate any such solution of the difficulty, which 
would represent the apostle as sailing under false colors. !N"or 
can we regard the alterations as the result of accident or for- 
getfulness. They can only have sprung from design ; and we 
take the right explanation to be this : The apostle gives the 
substantial import of the prophecy in Isaiah, but in accordance 
with his design gives it also a more special direction, and one 
that pointed to the kind of fulfillment it must now be expected 
in that direction to receive. According to the prophet, the 
Kedeemer was to come to or for Zion, somehow in its behalf, 
and in the behalf also of penitent souls in it, those turning 
from transgression. So, indeed, he had done already in the 
most literal and exact manner ; and the small remnant who 
turned from transgression recognized him, and hailed his com- 
ing. But the apostle is here looking beyond these ; he is look- 
ing to the posterity of Jacob generally, for whom, in this and 
other similar predictions, he descries a purpose of mercy still 
in reserve. For, while he strenuously contends that the prom- 
ise of a seed of blessing to Abraham, through the line of 
Jacob, was not confined to the natural offspring, he explicitly 
declares this to have been always included — not the whole, 
certainly, yet an elect portion out of it. At that very time, 
when so many were rejected, there was, he tells us, such an 
elect portion ; and there must still continue to be so, " for the 
gifts and calling of God are without repentance ;" that is, God 
having connected a blessing with Abraham and his seed in 
perpetuity, he could never recall it again ; there should never 
cease to be some in whom that blessing was realized. But, 
besides, there must here also be a fullness : the first-fruits of 
blessing gave assurance of a coming harvest. The fullness of 
the Gentiles itself is a pledge of it ; for if there was to be a 
fullness of these coming in to inherit the blessing, because of 
the purpose of God to bless the families of the earth in Abra- 
ham and his seed, how much more must there be such a full- 
ness in the seed itself? The overflowings of the stream could 



284: THE PEOPHETICAL FUTUEE OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE. 

not possibly reach further than the direct channel. But then, 
this fullness, in the case of the natural Israel, was not to be 
(as thej themselves imagined, and as many along with them 
still imagine) separate and apart ; as if by providing some dis- 
pensation of grace or external position for them individually. 
Of this, the apostle gives no intimation whatever. ISTay, on 
purpose, we believe, to exclude that very idea, he gives the 
more special turn to the prophecy, so as to make it out of Zion 
that the Eedeemer was to come, and with the view of turning 
away ungodliness from those in Jacob. For, the old literal 
Zion, in the apostle's view, was now gone. Its whole frame- 
work was presently to be laid in ruins ; and the only Zion, in 
connection with which the Redeemer could henceforth come, 
was that Zion in which he now dwells, which is the same with 
the heavenly Jerusalem, the Church of the ISTew Testament. 
He must come out of it, at the same time that he comes to or 
for it, in behalf of the natural seed of Jacob. And this is all 
one with saying, that these could now only attain to blessing 
in connection with the Christian Church ; or, as the apostle 
himself puts 'it, could only obtain mercy through their mercy — 
namely, by the reflux of that mercy which, issuing from Israel, 
has gone forth upon the Gentiles, and has been bearing 
in their fullness. It is one salvation, one blessing for both 
parties alike, which Israel had the honor to bring in, and was 
the first to receive ; but which they shall be among the last to 
receive fully. 

Thus explained, both the prophecy itself, and the apostle's 
use of it, are in perfect accordance with his principles of inter- 
pretation elsewhere, and with those we have endeavored to 
establish. And it holds out the amplest encouragement in 
respect to the good yet in store for the natural Israel. It holds 
out none, indeed, in respect to the fond hope of a literal re- 
establishment of their ancient polity. It rather tends to dis- 
courage any such expectation ; for the Zion, in connection with 
which it tells us the Messiah is to come, is the one in which 
he at present dwells, the Zion of the I^Tew Testament Church ; 
to which he can no longer come, except at the same time by 
coming out of it. Let those, therefore, who already dwell with 



THE PEOPHETICAL FUTURE OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE. 285 

him in this Zion go forth in his name, and deal in faith and 
love with these members of the stock of Israel. Let them feel 
that in such evangelistic work the presence and power of the 
Lord are pledged to be with them ; and let them do it in the 
sure conviction and hope that the conversion of Jew and Gen- 
tile shall happily react on each other, till the promised fullness 
on both sides is attained. For this important work, and the 
animating prospects connected with it, they have sure ground 
to go upon ; but for local changes and external relationships 
they have none ; and it is no part of the design of prophecy to 
lead the Christian Church either to wait for such, or to work 
for them. 



286 THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF 



CHAPTEE III. 

THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF THE CHURCH ANT> KINGDOM' 

OF CHRIST. 

Under this general head may be comprised all that requires 
to be said, in an elementary treatise like the present, on what 
the prophecies unfold respecting other topics connected with 
the Chi-istian dispensation. These topics all stand related in 
some manner to the condition and destinies of Christ's church 
and kingdom. They are presented, however, under different 
aspects and relations ; and it is impossible to arrive at any 
satisfactory knowledge of the general purport of what is writ- 
ten, without either going through the prophecies in order and 
giving a regular exposition of their contents, or endeavoring 
to exhibit, in connection with a few leading points, the light 
they collectively throw on the tendencies and results of Gospel 
times. Either way it were scarcely possible to avoid a certain 
degree of complexity and repetition, as both the prophecies 
themselves, and the subjects of which they treat, frequently 
run into each other. But by being viewed in a definite order 
and connection there will be found less of repetition than 
might otherwise be possible, and there will also be secured a 
more distinct continuity and progression of thought. "We, 
therefore, adopt this latter method, and, in following it, shall 
take the latitude that is indispensable to a proper investigation 
of the subject ; not confining our survey to what may still with 
some confidence be reckoned the prophetical future of the 
Gospel dispensation, but embracing also what might be regarded 
as future from the era of its commencement. 



THE CHUECH AND KINaDOM OF CHRIST. 287 



SECTION I. 

THE CHUECH AND KINGDOM OF CHEIST IN THEIE RELATION TO 
THE KINGDOMS OF THIS WORLD. 

The prophecies which relate to this subject are, in one sense, 
of great variety and compass, but in another, of comparatively 
limited extent. They are the one or the other, according as 
we have respect to prophecies of a general or to prophecies of 
a specific and determinate nature. Those of the former class 
begin with the times of David, when the great promise of 
blessing, originally given to Abraham, first assumed a distinctly 
personal shape, and became linked with the expectation of one 
in David's line, on whom the hopes and destinies of the world 
were to depend. In the series of predictions originating in 
this covenant with David, and unfolding its prolific import, 
whatever other topics are introduced, the kingly character of 
the expected Messiah always holds a prominent place ; and not 
only that, but also the sure and final ascendency of his king- 
dom over all the rival powers and kingdoms of the world. 
His right to rule in the afi*airs of men was to be alike absolute 
and universal ; and however resisted for a time, and left appar- 
ently to struggle for existence, the destination of this king was 
to be that of one " conquering and to conquer," till everything 
was subdued, and all became subject to his hand. There is 
not one of the more properly Messianic psalms in which this 
progress and result are not exhibited, though some dwell more 
particularly on one phase or aspect of the history, some on 
another. And such also is the character of those predictions 
scattered through the prophetical books, which, on the ground 
of the promise made to David, point to the future establish- 
ment of Christ's Church and kingdom. In general, they begin 
by exhibiting an inherent contrariety in spirit between the 
things pertaining to this divine kingdom and those of the 
world, the ones being of God, therefore holy, just, merciful, 
and blessed ; the others of the earth, and partaking, in conse- 
quence, of its selfishness, carnality, and corruption. Then, as 



288 THE PEOPHETICAL FUTUEE OF 

the natural result of this inherent contrariety, the mutual an- 
tipathy and death-like struggle for the mastery is depicted, and 
that with infinite fullness and diversity ; the Mngs of the earth 
• with their carnal weapons and material resources appear com- 
bining together, taking counsel, and with consummate malice 
and energy striving to crush the person and arrest the progress 
of the heaven-appointed King. But all in vain. It is not he 
but they who suffer in the conflict ; he goes on like a resistless 
hero, lifting up the head, while they fall under the arrows 
which he sends forth in the cause of truth and righteousness ; 
so that but one of two alternatives is before them, either to 
yield themselves to his sway or to perish under the stroke of 
his indignation. And, finally, in the last lines and issues of 
the prospective delineation, the cause and kingdom of Messiah 
become everywhere triumphant. The kings of the earth, in so 
far as they have not fallen under his wrath, are seen walking 
in his light, and doing homage to him ; their kingdoms have 
become, in a manner, his kingdoms ; all the ends of the world 
turn to the Lord, and the families of the nations worship before 
him, throughout the earth " one Lord, and his name One." 

1^0 w, in respect to the substance of these prophecies, only a 
comparatively small portion of them can be said to belong to 
what is still the future of the Christian Church ; that, namely, 
which relates to the absolute completeness and universality of 
the kingdom of Christ. The other and larger, as well as more 
circumstantial parts of them, which describe the mutual antip- 
athy and struggle, the rise of the personal Messiah and his cause 
from small beginnings, and in the face of the most violent and 
long-continued opposition, till the greater part of the old civil- 
ized world owned his supremacy, and many kings, nominally at 
least, did homage to his name : all these belong to the past ; 
their fulfillment is legibly inscribed in the records of the world's 
history. And in regard to what still remains to be accom- 
plished, though we cannot but see in the present state of the 
world, and even of the professing Church, many great and 
discouraging obstacles in the way of success, yet when viewed 
in the light of what has already been achieved, they cannot 
with certainty be pronounced insurmountable to Christian 



THE CHURCH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 289 

effort and resources. The small mustard seed has sprung up 
into a lofty tree ; and whatever hinderances there may be tend- 
ing to impede further progress, and prevent ultimate success, 
they are of the same kind with those over which the truth has 
in a considerable degree prevailed, and which no one has a 
right to say it cannot wholly overcome. Besides, who can tell 
what special providences may be in store to favor the advance- 
ment of truth and righteousness ? How many changes and 
revolutions, even of a civil and literary kind, may arise fitted 
to strike at the root of prevailing errors and superstitions, and 
prepare the way for the triumph of the cross ? Above all, as 
living Christianity spreads, and the feeling grows among en- 
lightened and earnest minds that the highest well-being of the 
world is bound up with the diffusion of the Gospel, what sea- 
sons of refreshing, in aid of their exertions, may not be sent 
from the presence of the Lord ? In such considerations there 
is enough to make the contemplated issue probable, even with- 
out any great departure from the regular course of events ; 
and that it sliall somehow take place is the united testimony of 
all the predictions referred to. Christ shall reign till his ene- 
mies have become his footstool, and shall cause the knowledge 
of the Lord to cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. The 
word of prophecy can never reach its full accomplishment till 
this result is attained. 

But while the result is very distinctly and frequently an- 
nounced in this class of predictions, nothing very particular is 
intimated in tbem as to the relation of Messiah's kino-dom to 
the kingdoms of the world individually. These kingdoms are 
viewed in the general, as all alike opposed to the character and 
claims of Messiah, and alike also destined to submit or be de- 
stroyed. It is not doubtfully indicated of some of them, that 
in process of time they would renounce their hostile for a 
friendly position, and help forward the cause they at first 
sought to withstand ; as when David speaks of " princes com- 
ing out of Egypt, and Ethiopia stretching out her hands to 
God," (Psa. Ixviii, 31,) and when Isaiah makes promise to the 
Church of kings being her nursing-fathers and queens her 

nursing-mothers, of the forces of the Gentiles coming to her 

19 



290 THE PEOPHETICAL FUTURE OF 

and kings ministering to her, (chap, xlix, 23 ; Ix, 10, 11,) witli 
many more of a like kind. Such passages plainly imply that 
while the struggle was still pending between the cause of Christ 
and the powers of the world, while the people of God were 
still in need of help for the conflict in which they had to en- 
gage, different nations ^dth their rulers would successively 
give in their adherence, and contribute their aid to the final 
result. But in what way, or to what extent this might be 
expected to take place, we can learn nothing from such general 
predictions. 

We turn, therefore, to the other and more specific class of 
prophecies, which, as we said, are comparatively limited in 
number. Indeed, they are peculiar to Daniel and the Apoca- 
lypse ; and in these, again, are so related to each other, that 
those of Daniel form the foundation of what is written in the 
Apocalypse ; the latter simply resuming the subject, as it had 
been left by Daniel, and prosecuting it further into detail. We 
shall, therefore, glance first at the prophetic outline which is 
exhibited in Daniel, and then consider the subsequent and 
related visions of the Apocalypse. The view presented in both 
respects must necessarily be brief and confined to the more 
leading features. 

§ 1. Prophecies in Daniel concerning Messiah! s Kingdom in 
its relation to the Kingdoms of the World. 

The prophecies in question are found in chaps, ii and vii ; 
the one containing Nebuchadnezzar's vision of the great com- 
posite image, with the intei*pretation of it by Daniel, and the 
other, the vision and dream given to Daniel himself respect- 
ing the five monarchies. That the two visions relate to the 
same subject, and differ only in presenting it under diverse 
aspects, can admit of no doubt. The diversity also, (as pre- 
viously noticed, p. 122,) has its foundation in nature, and is in 
perfect accordance with the relative position of the parties 
through whom the visions were given. It is the external 
aspect of the matter that is presented in the vision of IN^ebu- 
chadnezzar, while the internal is brought out in that of Daniel. 



THE CHURCH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 291 

The heathen king sees such a symbol of the kingdoms of this 
world and of the kingdom of Christ as was adapted to the 
carnal eye, which has a capacity for apprehending the appear- 
ances rather than the realities of things. The man of God, 
however, has an eye that looks beyond the surface ; he must 
see things as they reallj are ; and so the vision presented to 
him, while it may be said to follow in the same track and cover 
the same field with the other, lays open the actual nature of 
the different kingdoms : the minuter shades of difference in 
the worldly kingdoms themselves, and their collective and 
fundamental difference from the kingdom of Christ. 

(1.) This contrariety, however, and those differences are not 
entirely overlooked in the vision of Nebuchadnezzar ; thej 
are indicated there also, but only on the external side, and 
from the point of view in which it was natural for the Chal- 
dean monarch to contemplate them. It is in this light that 
the various materials of a natural kind in his vision are to be 
considered. They are symbols, but not of the relative worth 
and greatness of the several kingdoms respectively ; for then 
the fourth kingdom, imaged by the iron, must have been infe- 
rior to those which preceded it, and the fifth, the divine king- 
dom, having only a stone for its emblem, still again inferior to 
it. Nor, for the same reason, could the progressive descent in 
the value of the materials be intended to mark a progression 
in the world's degeneracy and rooted opposition to the work 
and kingdom of God.* These are not the points of comparison 
which come here into notice, or which would have been proper 
for such an occasion. The person to whose mind the image 
was presented was the representative of a grand, though for 
him intensely carnal and selfish idea, that, namely, of having 

* This idea is taken up by Auberlen (p. 200-6,) who, at some length, seeks to 
make out that the materials of the image symbolize a twofold progression — that of 
a growing civilization and culture (indicated mainly by the brass and iron,) and 
along therewith a growing contrariety to the truth aud holiness of Cod. In this 
he forgets the last material mentioned, which, though not a purt of the image, still 
belongs to the vision, and belongs to a lower territory in nature than the iron. 
If the qualities of the other things are to bo made account of, in the manner he 
suggests, the stone also must be included. But it is only from Nebuchadnezzar's 
point of view that tlie whole is to be considered and each element interpreted. 



292 THE PKOPHETICAL FUTUEE OF 

the whole world reduced under a single head, and fused 
together into one mighty empire. He was not content, like 
those who had preceded him in the field of ambitious rivalry 
or conquest, with strengthening the foundations of his dominion 
at home, or increasing his power and resources by subjugating 
foreign countries to his sway. His ambition towered higher ; 
he sought to be himself the one lord of the earth, and to have 
his kingdom like the gigantic tree that afterwards imaged it, 
'* reaching unto heaven, and the sight thereof unto the end of 
the earth." It was, indeed, the idea of a divine kingdom 
among men, but, as attempted to be realized by the Chaldean 
monarch, a vain and presumptuous parody of the idea, not a 
proper realization. This, however, it must be remembered, is 
the point of view from which the whole vision is to be contem- 
plated ; and by a reference to this, must the properties of the 
different materials be taken into account. In themselves, 
therefore, and as component parts of the image, they are 
symbols of the apparent relative fitness of those successive 
monarchies to fulfill the destiny at which they severally 
aspired, of becoming, in the proper sense, universal kingdoms. 
Let us see how admirably they do it. In the first place, as 
standing at the top of the list, and representing the idea in all 
its freshness and majesty, J^ebuchadnezzar and his dynasty are 
fitly represented by the head of gold. Then comes the Medo- 
Persian^ physically, indeed, stronger at the time of its appear- 
ance than the monarchy it supplanted, yet inferior (as it is 
expressly called, verse 39) in respect to the main point under 
consideration, because in its very foundation it was of a divided 
nature ; formed by the jmiction of two races who differed con- 
siderably in their religion and other characteristics, and never 
properly cohering together in its several parts, nor presided 
over by heads fitted to consolidate its interests : therefore not 
less fitly represented by the secondary metal of silver, and by 
the breast and arms of the image, in which not compact unity, 
but rather doubleness and divisions are prominently exhibited. 
Brass is remarkable for its pliancy, for the fine polish of which 
it is susceptible, and the brilliant glitter it emits. As such, 
therefore, nothing could more appropriately symbolize the 



THE CHURCH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 293 

third great kingdom, whicli began with the splendid achieve- 
ments of Alexander, and carried in its train the high intel- 
lectual culture of Greece. But withal, it betokened little 
durability or consolidating strength; and the part of the image 
that was formed of this material, the belly and the thighs, gave 
indication of a loose, disjointed, heterogeneous state of things, 
that could not hold well or long together. How exactly em- 
blematic throughout of an empire which aimed at imiversal 
sovereignty, and seemed as if, by a few brilliant efforts, it 
should succeed in the enterprise, but which fell asunder at the 
death of its founder, and became henceforth the prey of intes- 
tine divisions ! "Where it failed, however, the gigantic Roman 
empire, which comes next upon the stage, particularly excelled 
and fer outstripped all its predecessors. The slow and steady 
growth of ages, Rome struck her roots deep, wherever she ob- 
tained a footing, and left the impress of her sovereign will and 
of her imperial laws and institutions on every region of the 
ancient civilized world. " The arms of the republic," says 
Gibbon, as if writing the interpretation of this part of the 
vision, " sometimes vanquished in battle, always victorious in 
war, advanced with rapid strides to the Euphrates, the Danube, 
the Rhine, and the ocean ; and the images of gold and silver 
or brass, that might serve to represent the nations and their 
kings, were successively broken by the iron monarchy of 
Rome." Yet, while it could break and beat down everything 
opposed to it in the existing powers and dominions of the earth, 
growing even and prospering till it had become co-exteixsive 
with the known world, it could not secure for itself the eter- 
nity which it so ambitiously aimed at. There was in it, indeed, 
the strength of the iron ; but the legs of the image, which 
were composed of that material, themselves indicated division ; 
a division strikingly exemplified by the partition of the empire 
into the two sections of the East and West ; and still further, 
when, as symbolized by the toes and the feet, part of iron and 
part of clay, the irruptions of barbaric hosts entirely broke up 
its unity, and with the introduction of fresh races upon the 
theater of the world, brought in also new elements into its 
Bocial arrangements and civil institutions. 



294 THE PROPHETICAL FUTUEE OF 

Thus as regards the component parts of the great image in 
this vision, and their several application, everything finds its 
striking verification in the annals of history. Indeed, the ver- 
ification is so striking, and the parallel so exact in all its parts, 
that we cannot but discern the impress of the same divine hand 
in both ; the very conception and distribution of such a sym- 
bolical image was as manifestly from God as the successive rise 
and the varied characteristics and fortunes of the gigantic em- 
pires which fulfilled its prophetic import. aSTor does the cor- 
respondence fail, it becomes if possible still more wonderful, 
when we look at the aspect presented of the last, the only truly 
universal and everlasting kingdom in the world. It is from 
this point of view that the subject is still to be contemplated ; 
as thus only can we see the fitness of the material chosen to 
represent the divine kingdom. A stone is, indeed, a poor em- 
blem of such a kingdom, if viewed with respect to the proper 
nature of the kingdom, and the high objects it is designed to 
accomplish : the one gross, earthly, rigid, dead ; the other 
spiritual and heavenly, all instinct with life and blessing, and 
with pliant energy adapting itself to every relation and circum- 
stance of being. But in the particular respect now under con- 
sideration, in the fitness and destination of this kingdom to 
supplant the other kingdoms, and attain to the universality 
and permanence of dominion which they vainly strove to pos- 
sess, what better emblem could be found than that of a stone ! 
Massy, firm, compact in structure, crushing in the dust the 
looser and softer materials with which it comes in contact, and 
itself not only retaining its original unity, but growing into a 
huge mountain, and filling the whole earth with its vastness ! 
Here at last was the sublime idea of the Chaldean monarch 
realized ; but realized in a very difierent way from that in 
which his fond ambition was prompting him to attempt it. 
Existing altogether apart from the image which symbolized the 
kingdoms of the world, this stone evidently pointed to a king- 
dom entirely different in its origin and nature from theirs : a 
stone, not graven like the other by art or man's device, but 
cut out from the unhewn rock, and cut without hands : how 
expressive of a kingdom formed by the immediate operation of 



THE CHUECH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 295 

the Great Arcliitect of nature ! and, as snch, partaking of the 
irresistible might and the endless duration of its divine Author ! 
Everything, therefore, gives way before it ; it destroys in its 
progress whatever is contrary to it, and itself at length possesses 
and mis all. 

It remains to be asked, how much of this prophetical out- 
line belongs to the past, and how much to the future ? The 
question has been variously answered, according to the differ- 
ent views entertained by writers on prophecy respecting the 
character and prospects of Messiah's kingdom. But, looking 
simply to the language of the symbolical prediction, there are, 
it will be perceived, two points in which the description appears 
indefinite ; the one is as to the precise time when this divine 
kingdom, represented by the stone, should make its appear- 
ance ; and the other, the precise manner in which its establish- 
ment should actively press on the other kingdoms, and cause 
their annihilation. In regard to the first of these points, it is 
merely said, that " in the days of these kings shall the God of 
heaven set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed." 
(ver. 44.) By the " days of these kings " have sometimes been 
understood the later stages of the fourth monarchy, when it 
became subdivided into many separate states. But, while this 
rent and broken condition is plainly referred to in the vision, 
it is not described as being distinguished by separate kings or 
kingdoms; and, therefore, the only reference to which the 
days of the kings can legitimately apply, is the collective 
period of the kings or kingdoms symbolized by the image. 
The language is purposely indefinite. It does not indicate at 
w^hat particular time, or even under which worldly dominion, 
the kingdom represented by the stone should begin to develop 
itself on the theater of the world, though, from being men- 
tioned the last in order, and from the fourth worldly kingdom 
being the one with which alone it appears coming into col- 
lision, the natural inference obviously is, that the commence- 
ment of the heavenly kingdom is to be assigned to the fourth 
or last form of the earthly one. The whole of these successive 
monarchies of the. world are taken together as but different 
phases of the same worldly principle ; in a somewhat different 



296 THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF 

form tlie old always lives again in the new ; so that the image 
which represents the entire series appears still standing in its 
completeness, the several successive kingdoms which it sym- 
bolized were to the last ideally present ; but, from the nature 
of the case, they could only be so as seen in that which was 
more immediately represented by the legs and feet of the 
image. Even here, however, there is an indefiniteness ; for, 
while the stone is spoken of as pressing with irresistible force 
upon the image first when the history had reached to what is 
symbolized by the feet, it is not said that the stone then for 
the first time appeared. On the contrary, before the stone 
smote the image, we must think of it as taking form in the 
world ; it must be viewed as coming into substantive existence 
as being cut out, before it began to act aggressively ; the rather 
so, as it is not the simple appearance of this divine kingdom, 
and its universal establishment, that is the subject of the vision, 
but its grow^th from small beginnings onward to complete and 
ultimate success. The moment of the bruising, therefore, is 
not necessarily, nor even probably the moment of the actual 
formation of the stone ; and a period seems to lie there of indefi- 
nite length — the period of the rise and early progress of Chris- 
tianity, when, by an agency altogether its own, and holding 
directly of God, it gradually advanced to a distinct organiza- 
tion and a form in which it could act extraneously upon the 
affairs and destinies of the world. 

The other point mentioned had respect to the manner in 
which the establishment of Messiah's kingdom was to tell on 
the worldly kingdoms. This is described in the action of the 
stone, as that of bruising the image, so as to render its compo- 
nent elements, the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the 
gold, like the chaff of the summer threshing-floors, which the 
wind carries away. A sublime image truly of their evanes- 
cent nature, as compared with that which destroyed them, and 
of their utter disappearance from the face of the world ! But 
if we ask, in what respect, or by what kind of operation was 
this work of demolition to be wrought, nothing definite is 
indicated ; nor, indeed, could it be from . the nature of the 
representation ; for it is only (as we have repeatedly stated) 



THE CHURCH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 297 

the external aspect of the matter tliat is here presented to the 
view — the appearances and effects of things alone are de- 
scribed. So far as these are concerned, we are distinctly 
informed that the whole of the magnificent image which 
engrossed the vision of N^ebuchadnezzar, or, in plain terms, 
that a world-embracing monarchy such as he contemplated, 
presided over by one human will, and directed for the glory 
of its earthly head, in every shape and form which it might 
assume, was doomed to perpetual destruction. And that, 
not as a thing of itself dying out, but as a thing put out, 
and forever abolished by the establishment and the progress of 
that divine kingdom, to which alone the real universality and 
the absolute right of governing upon earth was to belong. 
This, it is well to be noted, though it is too commonly over- 
looked, is the only kind of abolition spoken of in the vision. 
It is not the subversion of constitutional government, and the 
dissolution of earthly states and kingdoms, (a subject not 
brought into consideration here,) but simply the extinction of 
those ambitious monarchies which grasped at the dominion of 
the world, and the causing them to disappear forever by the 
establishment of a higher kingdom, in which the idea they 
sought to embody was to be and alone could be realized. 
Has, then, the introduction of Christ's kingdom wrought such 
an effect ? We answer, unhesitatingly, that it has. And if 
we are asked how ? we reply, in the only way in which such 
gigantic and self-deifying schemes could be effectually abol- 
ished, by rendering men familiar with divine realities, with 
elevating principles, with heavenly aims and prospects. It has 
spread through humanity a regenerating leaven, the sense of 
God's redeeming love to man ; and by the wondrous acts of 
mercy and gifts of grace therewith connected, has diffused 
far and wide the feeling of the brotherhood of man, yea, and 
breathed the spirit of a new life into the history and aspirations 
of the world. It has thus, even with the manifold imperfec- 
tions that have attended its working and progress on earth, 
forever antiquated the idea of a universal monarchy in its old 
and grosser sense ; and shown this to be alone possible in the 
hands of Him, who, as at once God and man. Lord of heaven 



298 THE PROPHETICAL FUTUEE OF 

and earth, combines in his person the qualities, and holds at 
command the gifts necessary to the establishment of such an 
empire. Since the diffusion of Christianity, the only thing in 
a wrong direction that has properly aimed at, or has ever 
seemed in any measure to possess the character of a world- 
embracing dominion, is the parodying by corrupt doctrine and 
a false usurpation of this divine kingdom itself. But that is 
an essentially different matter from the old-world monarchies, 
and falling as it does within the domain of spiritual things, is 
brought out, as we shall see, in another connection. 

(2.) So much, then, for the first great prophecy of Daniel on 
the point before us — the relation of Christ's Church and king- 
dom to the kingdoms of the world. Like those previously 
noticed, it speaks chiefly of the past, so far as anything definite 
and particular is concerned ; but points also to the future ; 
inasmuch as it declares the absolute universality of Messiah's 
authority and rule among men, his unlimited and everlasting 
sway. This is yet far from having been established : while the 
stone has broken in pieces the image which sought to pre- 
occupy the entire ground, it has not yet itself grown so as to 
fill the whole earth. Let us turn, then, to the other prophecy 
in Daniel — the vision and dream recorded in the seventh chap- 
ter — and see if any further insight is furnished on the subject. 
Here, as already noticed, it is the internal aspect of the king- 
doms to which prominence is given, their respective character- 
istics and differences, first in regard to each other, and then in 
regard to the kingdom of Christ.* Yiewed as a whole, the 
worldly kingdoms have their representation in so many wild 
beasts, because in them the beastly principle was predominant, 
that is, the earthly, sensual, groveling tendency, with all its 
selfishness of working and its debasing results. In ITebuchad- 
nezzar's personal history, the man's heart was taken away and 
a beast's heart for a season given him, (Dan. iv, 16,) as a judi- 

* We take it for granted that the succession of kingdoms in this case is the 
same as in the other, and that the attempts of some modern Germans, followed by 
Moses Stuart, either to divide between the Median and Persian kingdoms, or to 
take Alexander's kingdom for the third, and that of his successors for the fourth, 
with its ten subdivided kings or kingdoms, have palpably failed. They have been 
thoroughly refuted by Hofmann, Hengstenberg, and latterly by Auberlen. 



I 



THE CHURCH AND KINGDOM OF CHEI^T. 299 

cial sign and token from the hand of God, that by living as 
he had been doing, for the gratification of his own selfish de- 
sires, and for having all made subservient to his own groveling 
ambition, he was acting the beastly, rather than the human 
part. And accordingly, when the man's heart returns to him, 
with the wisdom to use it aright, his eye at once turns heaven- 
ward, he rises above self and the world, and acknowledges his 
dependence on the power and goodness of the Most High, who 
does, as he expressed it, according to his will among the armies 
of heaven and the inhabitants of the earth. We can have no 
doubt, therefore, as to what is meant by beastly natures being 
chosen to represent the successive worldly monarchies ; it inti- 
mates that they were to be so many personifications of earth- 
liness, all pervaded and governed by the same prone, ungodly, 
carnal, and self-deifying spirit. In fitting accordance with 
such a common character, they are also represented as having 
a common origin : they appear rising together out of tlie sea 
at the moment of its being driven and agitated by the winds 
of heaven ; in other words, they spring from beneath, from the 
lap and bosom of earth ; nor from this in its better moods, as it 
exists in seasons of peaceful repose, but when moved by violent 
commotions, heaving and agitated by the fierce passions and 
tumultuous elements of sin. What real good could come, or 
what lasting creations proceed, from such a mode of generation ? 
In respect to the characteristic difierences among the several 
worldly kingdoms, it is unnecessary to say much. Under the 
emblem of a lion with eagle's wings, which were afterward 
plucked, itself also placed in a standing and erect posture upon 
the earth, no longer slavishly directed to this, but having a 
man's heart given it to look upward, w^e have a representation 
of the Babylonian empire, as exemplified in its head : first, its 
lionlike majesty and strength, combined with the winged speed 
of its march to conquest and dominion, and its soaring sublim- 
ity of spirit ; then, the checks and arrests laid upon it, render- 
ing further enlargement impossible ; and, finally, the humbling 
providences which forced on it a sense of the power and sov- 
ereignty of God, and with the loss of dominion brought reason 
again to the ascendant. Then, by means of a beast like a 



300 THE PEOPHETICAL FUTURE OF 

bear, raising itself on one side, with three ribs in its teeth, and 
a command given it to devour much fl.esh, we have an image 
of the Medo-Persian kingdom, in its general thirst for blood 
and conquest (comp. Hosea xiii, 7, 8, with Isa. xiii, 15-18 ; 
Jer. H, 20-24,) its notorious disregard and lavish expenditure of 
human life, its originally composite character, as if one side 
were dissimilar to the other, and by the strength of one chiefly 
(the Median) it was to arise for the work of conquest, with the 
three-fold direction in which it was to have its appetite in this 
respect satiated.* The panther or leopard comes next, with 
four wings of a fowl, as for flying, and also four heads ; one 
lining creature, yet with a foui'fold partition in the very seat 
of life and motion, and having dominion given to it ; a strange 
compound, but strikingly expressive of the Grecian monarchy, 
which, in its movements, like the leopard, was remarkable for 
the quickness and rapidity of its spring, as also for cunning 
and dexterity in seizing its prey, (Hab. i, 8 ; Jer. v, 6,) and 
which, after having astonished the world by its elastic energy 
and wonderful feats of prowess, in the person of its founder, 
split into four dominions, which survived till a much greater 
than they overspread the field. This greater empire, the 
greatest of all in its aspirations after worldly dominion, and 
the most extensive and lasting in its ascendency, the Roman, 
is most aptly represented by a nameless monster, " dreadful 
and terrible, and strong exceedingly, devouring and breaking 
in pieces, and stamping the residue with its feet, and diverse 
from all the beasts that were before it." This was, unques- 
tionably, the characteristic of the E-oman power in the days of 
its vigor and conquest. For, though it was a part of Rome's 
policy to treat the nations she conquered with many marks of 
respect and kindness, to leave especially their religion and 
social manners untouched, and to fill them with sentiments of 
veneration and attachment to the " eternal city," yet the whole 
aim of her administration was directed to the purpose of 
moulding every province and state of the world into one vast 

* Compare chap, viii, 4, where the ram, representing the Medo-Persian empire, 
is described as pushing west-ward, northward, and southward — ^Babylon, Lybia, 
and Egypt being perhaps more immediately intended. 



THE CHURCH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 301 

empire, and consequently to destroy and obliterate every sign 
of national independence, to merge the individual in the uni- 
versal. The other kingdoms that preceded her, were com- 
paratively rapid and hasty in their formation ; they neither 
possessed nor displayed anything like the skill and pains put 
forth by Rome through a succession of ages, with the view of 
smoothing down national peculiarities and compacting thean 
into one huge system of universal government. All the more 
remarkable, too, on her part, that the whole was done, not as 
in the case of the rest for the aggrandisement of a particu- 
lar dynasty, but from a systematic and hereditary love of 
rule in a city and people ; so that the very name of Rome 
carried with it a kind of magic influence, and the gigantic 
sway connected with it formed the nearest approach that 
could be made, in a mere earthly government, to a kingdom of 
spiritual influences and living dependence on an invisible Head. 
It was still, however, far from this, and in spirit and tendency 
as diverse from it as in other respects from the worldly king- 
doms that preceded it. 

Strong as this empire was, compact in its organization, and 
spirit-like in its power and influence, it contained, like every- 
thing earthly, the elements of dissolution and decay. This 
was indicated in the former vision by the legs of the image, 
the feet of iron and clay, and the toes of the feet. And here it 
is brought out by means of ten horns, which were seen on the 
beast, and which are afterwards explained as the kings (mean- 
ing thereby kingdoms) which were to arise out of the fourth 
empire. By arising out of it must be meant, that they were to 
be historically connected with it, and to be in a sense its con- 
tinuation ; as there can be no doubt that the various kingdoms, 
which sprung up after the irruptions of the barbarians into the 
Roman empire, had much in common with Rome, while in 
policy and character they were diverse from it ; they still had 
her laws, her language and literature, her institutions and cus- 
toms, for the basis of theirs.* There was, however, too much 
of the new to admit of a proper amalgamation with the old ; as 

* For some remarks on the number ton, see the concluding portion of Section 3 
of this Chapter. 



302 THE PKOPHETICAL FUTURE OF 

was intimated in tlie vision of tlie image, by the mixing of clay 
with the iron, and the attempts at nnion by intermarriages and 
compacts, " mingling themselves with the seed of men," yet 
not cleaving one to another. But this, and everything, indeed, 
of an individual kind, respecting the ten kingdoms, is here 
passed over, as in haste, in order to concentrate attention on 
that peculiar kingdom, diverse from all the others, which was 
symbolized by the little horn which came up among the others, 
and which is represented as not only plucking up three of these 
others, but also as taking such a part against the kingdom and 
people of God, and exercising withal such an influence over the 
rest, that it drew on the judgment of the whole, l^othing 
whatever is said of this extraordinary power in the former 
vision ; for it manifestly comes within the domain of the Church, 
and is much more a spiritual than a civil and earthly dominion ; 
so that it did not properly fall within the range of Nebuchad- 
nezzar's view, which, with strict propriety in adhering to the 
natural as the basis of the supernatural, was confined to the 
outward and temporal aspect of things. On this account, also, 
we refrain from here adverting more particularly to what is said 
of this horn or kingdom, as, we think, there can be no reason- 
able doubt that it is to be identified with the antichrist, and 
will, therefore, fall to be considered under our next division. 

But it is in connection with the wickedness practiced through 
the instrumentality of this power, and the judgment to be in- 
flicted upon it, and all its abettors, that the fifth, the divine, 
and alone universal and everlasting kingdom, is here intro- 
duced. On this occasion it appears, not in its rise and prog- 
ress, but in its strength and glory, and for the execution, 
more immediately, of the work of judgment. First, the 
Ancient of Days, as he is called, v. 9, the Eternal God, is rep- 
resented as appearing, on account of the heaven-daring spirit 
manifested by the power in question, and the evils it was 
occasioning among men, and with thrones of judgment set, 
and streams of fire issuing from before him, as well as myriads 
of attending spirits, proceeding to reckon with, and condemn 
to deserved punishment, the offending parties. These— that 
is to say, the wicked power itself, and the other powers or 



THE CHUECH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 303 

horns which were led to take part with it in the evil — are 
spoken of as being consigned to a common funeral-pile ; while 
the rest of the beasts had only their dominion taken away, and 
their lives prolonged for a season and time. The same apparent 
anomaly occurs here as in the vision of the second chapter. 
All the symbolical characters appear to the last as existing 
together on the stage ; while, from the description given of 
them, they are not cotemporaneous bnt successive powers, 
each rising on the ruins of its predecessor, so that, historically, 
all the preceding ones must have gone ere the last rose to the 
ascendant. The reason, however, of admitting such an anom- 
aly, and of conceiving of the other powers as still existing, was 
merely to bring out more distinctly the moral truth involved 
in this part of the delineation. Those earlier forms of the 
worldly power, while all rooted in sin and essentially ungodly, 
were yet far inferior in guilt and wickedness to the last, espe- 
cially as represented by the little horn, with its outrageous 
blasphemies, and disastrous influence in the Church, and violent 
persecutions against the saints of God. Therefore, when the 
time for judgment comes, this last must appear first ; the stroke 
of vengeance must alight directly, and with its heaviest retribu- 
tions, upon the power which has done most to provoke its in- 
flictions ; and bad as the fate was of the others, having lost in the 
taking away of their dominion all that they contended for, it 
seemed mild as compared with the doom now appointed to the 
consummate offender. There^ pre-eminently, the carcase ap- 
peared ; and there the eagles must primarily be found gathered 
together. 

It is evident, then, that this part of the vision is framed with 
a view to one great object — to render prominent the moral 
element in the history of God's dispensations. The delineation 
of the worldly side of the picture is carried on continuously (as 
very commonly in prophecy) till it reach its culminating point ; 
the iniquity of the worldly power, in its last and most aggra- 
vated phase, grows till it becomes full ; and then the righteous 
kingdom, with its divine head, comes forth to condemn and 
cast out the evil. It were quite a mistake, however, on this 
account, to suppose that the kingdom God had no existence in 



304: THE PKOPHETICAL FUTURE OF 

the world till this terminating part of the process ; and would 
evince as great a misunderstanding of the proper import in 
one respect as it had been in another, to suppose the continued 
existence of the three first kingdoms as actual powers in the 
world, down to the time that the judgment is represented as 
taking effect upon the last of them. It is, throughout, an 
ideal representation, formed so as to exhibit, in the most effect- 
ive manner, the real tendencies and final issues of things ; and, 
as a natural consequence, matters are compressed into a single 
act which might be the product of ages, and events appear in 
close juxtaposition which, in actual history, might stand ever 
so far apart. So was it, for example, in Isaiah's vision of the 
doom of Babylon, (chap, xiii,) and Ezekiel's vision of the 
destruction of Tyre, (chap, xxvi, 7, seq.^ xxviii;) the work which 
it was to take centuries to accomplish is presented as a thing 
devised and executed at once. We are not, therefore, to sup- 
pose here that because the doom of the worldly power is repre- 
sented in a similar manner, that it is to fall by a single stroke ; 
or that the kingdom, through which the consummating act is 
to be inflicted, then for the first time enters upon the stage of 
history. Indeed, the reverse is manifest, from the dream-part 
of the vision given in explanation of that which was seen. In 
the vision itself the prophet saw thrones set (so it should be 
rendered at ver. 9 ; not cast down, but set or placed down) for 
kingly persons vested with power and authority to pronounce 
judgment, implying that the judgment was not to be the act 
simply of the Eternal, nor the inflicted doom to proceed straight 
from the bolt of Omnipotence. But who were those assessors 
in judgment ? By whom was it that the powers of evil were 
to be judged and cast out? By looking at the explanations in 
ver. 19-27, we learn that they are not the angels-, as has too com- 
monly been supposed, (these are never represented as judging, 
always only as ministering spirits,) but the saints of the Most 
High, the same saints who, along with the Son of man, are to 
possess the kingdom. It is to them that the work of judgment 
on the worldly power is committed, (ver. 21 ;) it is they who sit 
in judgment, and take away his dominion, and consume and 
destroy it to the end, and, in turn, receive the kingdom for an 



THE CHUECH AND KINGDOM OF CHEIST. 305 

everlasting possession, of whicli the other has been dispossessed, 
(ver. 26, 27.) But whence should these saints have come ? 
How have they attained to such numbers, and such authority 
and power? ]^ot, we may be sure, of a sudden, or by any 
miraculous intervention of Providence. They can be none 
other than the members of the kingdom which has been in 
existence since the Lord came from heaven to found it by his 
incarnation and blood. And their appearing here in such 
numbers, and with such judicial authority and power, merely 
indicates that the kingdom to which they belong has at length 
acquired the mastery; the cause of righteousness and truth, 
with which it is associated, has become triumphant ; and the 
interest opposed to these vanishes from the field, as smitten 
with irrecoverable perdition. So long as that interest appeared 
to prevail and prosper, it seemed as if God's rectitude slum- 
bered ; and men were disposed to sigh with the Psalmist, O 
that he would awake to the judgment, that he would estab- 
lish the just ! But when the reverse takes place, and they see 
the cause of wickedness going down, they are equally ready 
with devout gratitude to exclaim, Thou satest in the throne, 
judging right ; Thou hast destroyed the wicked. (Psa. vii, ix.) 

§ 2. Prophecies in the Apocalypse concerning the Kingdom of 
• Christ in its relation to the Kingdoms of the World. 

The views now exhibited from Daniel again reappear in the 
Apocalypse. Indeed, the grand drama unfolded in that mys- 
terious book is little else than a simple expansion of this part 
of Daniel's vision, by following it out into detail. There, in 
the opening vision, we have presented to our view the Ancient 
of Days on the throne, with the Son of man (as the Lamb) in 
the midst of it, and round about the central throne four-and 
twenty other thrones, (so it should be, not seats,) for the four- 
and-twehty crowned elders, the representatives of Christ's 
royal priesthood, or entire membership of a redeemed Church. 
The scene is, in truth, an ideal representation (precisely as in 
Daniel) of the Lord and his assessors in judgment, the saints, 

whom he exalts to sit witli him on his throne, and destines to 

20 



806 THE PEOPHETICAL FUTUEE OF 

possess with him the kingdom. These appear together in the 
attitude of dealing judicially with the ungodly world, and 
preparing the way for the final occupation of the inheritance. 
Hence thunders, and lightnings, and voices proceed from the 
midst of them, (ver. 5,) the awful signs of coming wrath ; and 
the seven-sealed book is opened, which contains in successive 
stages the world's doom and the Church's victory ; and scene 
after scene follows, with sounding of trumpets and pouring 
out of vials, during which the same action is constantly pro- 
ceeding to its proper issue. The whole ends, as here, with the 
utter destruction of the beast, and with the saints living and 
reigning with Christ upon the earth ; in other words, possess- 
ing the kingdom. So that, were it otherwise doubtful, the 
scheme and arrangement of the Apocalypse would put it be- 
yond a doubt that the brief and vivid representation of Daniel 
in reality covers an extensive field of operations ; that it em- 
braces the general progress, as well as the final result of 
Christ's cause upon earth, and includes the main substance of 
the Book of Revelation. Only, while Daniel, for the reasons 
already stated, points more directly to the close of the action, 
St. John unfolds the numerous stages by which it was to be 
reached, the many windings and evolutions in the work of 
judgment upon the world, till judgment is brought forth unto 
victory.* 

In this general outline of the scenery and action of the 
Apocalypse a fair idea is conveyed both of the common agree- 
ment and the characteristic dififerences w^hich pervade the repre- 
sentations of the two Apocalyptists. They are precisely such 
as might have been expected from the one theme they had to 
handle, and the different positions they occupied in relation to 
it. Where the one merely gives a result, as seeing everything 
from afar, the other, speaking from a nearer point of view, 
gives us a process, with many attending characteristics alike 
of its nature and of its issue. While the look of Daniel into 
the future also is inward, as compared with that of JSTebuchad- 
nezzar, it is, as might have been expected, far inferior in depth, 
and inwardness, especially as regards the affairs of the divine 

* Compare what is said in Part I, chap, v, sec. 4, near the beginning. 



THE CHURCH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 30T 

kingdom, to that of tlie Evangelist. On the other hand, the 
worldly kingdoms amid which Daniel was standing, and which 
were then only beginning to ran their ungodly career, occupy 
a place in his visions which they no longer possess in John's ; 
here it is the last only, and the last chiefly in the latter stages 
of its history, that is particularly dwelt upon, as it was with 
this alone now that the people of God had to do. We shall, 
therefore, present in a few leading points what is peculiar in 
the representations of the Apocalypse on the subject before us, 
and shall notice, as we proceed, the relation (whether of corre- 
spondence or diversity) in which they stand to those of Daniel. 
Occasion also will be taken to draw attention to some features 
in the latter, which have, as yet, not been more than cursorily 
referred to. 

(1.) We notice first the representation that is given in the 
Apocalypse of the worldly power. In Daniel this appeared 
under a succession of beasts, each symbolizing a new* and 
somewhat different form of the great monarchies of the world. 
But now it appears simply as a beast, (chap, xiii,) a beast, how- 
ever, that had the same origin with those of Daniel, like them 
rising out of the sea, and a composite creature, uniting together 
the several forms of the three first in Daniel, (the lion, the 
bear, and the leopard,) and possessing also the ten horns which 
were seen in the fourth. These points of coincidence with the 
vision of Daniel plainly indicate a fundamental agreement, 
and, at the same time, such a difi'erence as is obtained by the 
compression of a diversity into a unity. The beast of the 
Apocalypse, accordingly, is the worldly power, not in its sev- 
eral parts or successive forms of manifestation, but in its total- 
ity. Having already passed through its earlier phases and 
reached its last regular form, it is naturally represented as one, 
or rather, as a composite whole, possessing still all that it ever 
had of a beastly, groveling, God-opposing character, and com- 
bining them together in its present visible realization. There 
is no essential diiference in this from the view given in Daniel; 
for there also, as we have had occasion to notice, both the four 
beasts and the several parts of the image were represented as 
at once successive, and in a sense also co-existing. The seven 



308 THE PEOPHETICAL FUTUEE OF 

heads in the beast of the Apocalypse present more of an 
apparent dissimilarity, and may seem at variance with the 
notion of an essential oneness between it and the monarchical 
symbols in Daniel. For these were only four, corresponding 
to the number of kingdoms, in which the general idea exhibited 
in them was attempted to be realized. How, then, if referring 
substantially to the same thing, should John have seen seven 
heads upon the beast — ^heads with crowns, consequently denot- 
ing so many kingdoms ? The main reason, no doubt, must be 
sought in the reality which the symbol represents, and which 
must somehow have been contemplated in a sevenfold aspect 
by the Evangelist. He afterward tells us, in chap, xvii, 9, 
(for we hold it as a settled point that the beast there discoursed 
of is identical with the one here,) that " the seven heads are 
seven mountains " — which may certainly have some reference 
to the seven-hilled city of Home, where the beast then had the 
seat of his dominion ; but it cannot possibly rest there, or have 
that for its chief reference ; since in a description otherwise 
entirely symbolical, the term " mountains " cannot be taken in 
a merely literal sense, nor without respect to its usual emblem- 
atical import of states or kingdoms. We have no doubt, 
however, that it does carry, in the first instance, an allusion to 
the seven hills of Rome. But to prevent our resting in this 
literal sense — to lead us rather to regard those Eoman hills as 
themselves the symbols of something higher, a kind of natural 
indication of the concentrated worldliness of Rome, as in a 
manner combining in her dominion all the phases of the 
worldly power, it is immediately added, " and they are" (not 
'' and there are ") " seven kings," meaning thereby, so many 
kingdoms, according to the uniform import of the word in this 
connection. There is, therefore, a double reference ; and 
hence it is introduced with the saying, " Here is the mind 
which hath wisdom," to intimate that there is something pecul- 
iar and enigmatical in what follows, and that it contained, if 
rightly understood, an important key for the unders-tanding 
and application of thi& part of the vision.^ 

* There is a precisely similar use of the literal as symbolical of the figurative 
ill the description of the whore, which, with reference to the historical Babylon 



THE CHURCH AKD KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 309 

Still, with this explanation of the language, the question 
recurs. Why should the worldly power have appeared to the 
Evangelist in a sevenfold aspect? To suppose that it has 
respect to seven forms of government which successively 
appeared in the Roman commonwealth from its commence- 
ment, is entirely arbitrary and fanciful. Any changes of a 
merely political kind Rome might have undergone, and before 
it came into contact with the Church, are of no moment as 
regards the subject of this prophecy ; they mark for it no 
epochs, and lie altogether outside the temtory on which it 
moves. It treats of the worldly power only in its relation to 
the kingdom of God, and of that in a collective aspect, as it 
has existed and manifested itself throughout history. The 
sevenfoldness ascribed to it, therefore, must be, not seven forms 
of government in one state, but seven different states or forms 
of dominion in which the worldly spirit, in its self-idolatrous 
and God-dishonoring form, successively embodied itself. And 
these the Evangelist finds by simply taking a wider range of 
view than Daniel, as he was naturally called to do, and con- 
templating the matter in its whole historical compass. Thus 
surveyed, the number seven readily occurred by adding to the 
four of Dauiel, first, the Egyptian and Assyrian kingdoms, 
which preceded, and which, as regards their own character and 
their relation to the divine kingdom, were essentially one with 
the others ; then the new and the divided state at the close into 
which the dissolved Roman empire fell. As it was of these 
chiefly that the Evangelist was called to treat, and as they were 
to hold, in some respects, a very different relation to the king- 
dom of God from that of heathen Rome, they quite naturally 
came to be represented as an additional head of the beasts 
Indeed, Daniel himself gave a sort of occasion for their being 
60 regarded, by representing them under the emblem of clay, 
which did not properly assort with the iron of ancient Rome ; 
in one respect they belonged to it, but not in another. In 

appeared sitting on many waters ; (ver. 1 ;) so Babylon of old did, liaving near and 
around her the streams and canals of the Euphrates, one of the great sources of 
her fertility and wealth ; but, like Rome's seven hills, in respect to the seven king- 
doms, so the waters of ancient Babylon are explained of " the peoples, and multi- 
tudes, and nations, and tongues," (ver. 15.) 



310 THE PEOPHETICAL FUTUEE OF 

what respects their relation was to differ, will appear in the 
sequel ; but meanwhile, as it was one leading object of the 
prophecy of this book to exhibit the difference and to reveal 
the peculiar part those kingdoms were to play in the history of 
God's Church, the state of things they were to introduce might 
well be entitled to rank as a new and final phase of the worldly 
power."^ 

In the realities of the subject, we thus find a solid ground 
for this part of the symbolical representation. But an addi- 
tional ground may also be noticed, in the connection exhibited 
between the beast, or worldly power, and the devil. This also 
is one of the points of difference between the Apocalypse and 
Daniel ; one of the indications it gives of a deeper insight into 
the spiritual world, since it lays open, in respect to the move- 
ments of evil upon the earth, the mighty though invisible 
influence of Satan. The outward manifestations of the worldly 
power are here but the signs of Satan's working ; and, as in 
the history of the fall, when he identified himself with the 
serpent, so here the beast is at once the image and the instru- 
ment of Satan. As the one, therefore, appeared under the 
form of a great dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, (chap, 
xii, 3,) so must the other that is to reflect liis nature and exer- 
cise his power. And seven is peculiarly the sacred number ; 
as such it is constantly recurring in the book of Hevelation, 
and is used as an emblem of the Spirit of God in his active 
operations in the Church, (" the seven spirits of God," chap. 
i, 4 ; iv, 5 ; v, 6.) Hence it is the number which Satan may 

* It was Hofmann, we believe, who, in more recent times, suggested this mode 
of interpreting the seven heads of the apocalyptic beast, though by leaving out 
Egypt, and dividing between the Greek empire generally, and Antiochus, he ar- 
ranged the matter somewhat differently. But it is in reality the ancient interpret- 
ation, the same substantially ;\-hich is given in the oldest connected commentary 
on the Revelation— that of Andreas of Csesarea, who hved about the end of the 
lifth century. He also began with Assyria, and made the Median as well as the 
Persian monarchy a separate kingdom. These, however, are differences ouly as to 
detail ; the fundamental idea is the same ; and we refer to the antiquity of the inter- 
pretation as a proof that it is really one not very far lo seek. It is the tendency 
of Protestant interpreters in later times to find Rome, heathen and papal, every- 
where in the Apocalypse, which has given currency to the idea of seven Romish 
forms of government being indicated by the number ; an idea wholly arbitrary, 
and incapable of yielding satisfaction. 



THE CHUKCH AND KIN'GDOM OF CHRIST. 311 

be supposed to affect, especially in those operations in wliicli 
lie tries to deceive and corrupt the Church of God. In these 
he ever seeks to parody and imitate the work of God's spirit. 
We therefore think (with Auberlen, p. 270) that some respect 
may be had to this consideration in the use here made of the 
number seven. But we are not disposed to lay much stress on 
it, and regard the other reason stated as undoubtedly the 
chief one. 

(2.) We turn now from the apocalyptic representation of 
the adverse or worldly power to that of the Church and king- 
dom of God. Here also, while we have a fundamental agree- 
ment with the visions of Daniel, we have important and char- 
acteristic shades of difference. Indeed we may say it is the 
kingdom only, and not what we more properly understand by 
the Church, that has any representation in the two visions of 
Daniel. He speaks simply of the kingdom that was to sup- 
plant the worldly monarchies, and obtain the everlasting and 
universal dominion they aspired after. And we must attend 
for a little to the form under which he presents it, as this not 
only contrasts in a striking manner with the representation 
given of the other kingdom, but also lays the foundation of the 
more special language used in the Apocalypse and in other 
parts of the 'New Testament. The other kingdoms have their 
emblematic representation in so many wild beasts, because 
they were to be in their pervading spirit and operations more 
beastly than human. But when the divine kingdom appears 
on the field, the form that represents it is one " like the Son of 
man," and " coming with the clouds of heaven." Though the 
form is simply human, there is evidently connected with it a 
superhuman elevation. For it comes, not like the base repre- 
sentatives of mere earthly rule, from beneath, but from above, 
and riding in the peculiar chariot of Deity, the clouds of 
heaven ; and it might seem but the fair conclusion that here 
also the form was indicative of a higher nature than outwardly 
appeared ; that the human likeness, to be properly liuman, 
required to be associated with the divine. It is, therefore, to 
give but a poor and partial exposition of the subject to say 
that it meant the Messiah " would be a human, not an angeli- 



312 THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF 

cal, or any otlier kind of being ; for, in the oriental idiom, Son 
of man and man are equivalent."* Let it be so ; the question 
remains, Why should the head and representative of this king- 
dom alone have been exhibited in the form of a man, while all 
the others, who really were men, should have been symbolized 
by so many beasts ? And why, having the likeness of a man, 
should he have been represented as coming, not like the others, 
from below, as cast up by the waves of a raging and tumultu- 
ous sea, but descending from the lofty elevation and serener 
atmosphere of a higher world ? Why such marked differences 
if the human alone was all that the expression, with its at- 
tendant circumstances, was designed to exhibit? It is true 
that the form here, as in the other cases, was not simply personal, 
but . emblematic ; indeed it might not (for aught that could 
have been certainly gathered fi'om the vision itself) have been 
personal at all ; it might merely have been intended to repre- 
sent symbolically the nature of this kingdom, which God was 
going to erect, as contradistinguished from the rest. In that 
respect it denoted, that while in them the merely animal 
powers and sensibilities should come into play, terror and 
physical force should prevail, all downward and groveling 
tendencies should rise to the ascendant, in this divine kingdom 
the nature of man should attain to its true dignity, and, re- 
united to the life of God, the moral elements of its being 
should be brought into proper exercise, and a softening, 
humanizing influence be diffused through the entire domain. 
But then who could be the instrument of setting up such a 
kingdom ? Like all the others, this kingdom must have a 
head, from whose spirit and character the whole was to take 
its impress, and one in whom personally and through whom 
instrumentally the true ideal of humanity was at length to be 
realized. Was this work, so different from what man had 
hitherto achieved, an undertaking for man alone to effect? 
Unquestionably not ; and hence in the vision, the human form 
representing at once the head and nature of the kingdom 
appears as the denizen of a higher sphere, and the personal 
associate of Godhead. It indicated that the ideal should 

* Dr. Campbell in his "Dissertations on the Gospels." 



THE CHUECH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 31S 

remain an ideal still, so far from being realized, contmnally 
outraged and trodden under foot by the ascendency of tbe 
baser elements in nature till tbe human should be interpene- 
trated by the divine, and God should in very deed dwell with 
men upon the earth. Everything therefore is in its proper 
place and character : As the devil had from the first assumed 
the beastly form in the serpent, whose nature it is to crawl 
upon the dust, so now in the Son of man God was to appear 
in the form of man to raise all above the beastly, and con- 
form it to the spiritual and divine. 

Such seems the fair and natural explanation of the epithet 
" Son of man," as originally and prospectively used in the 
vision of Daniel. And it is fully confirmed by one of the first 
recorded appropriations of it by our Lord. This occurred in 
the course of his conversation with !Nicodemus, when he said, 
"And no man hath ascended up to heaven, bat he that came 
down from heaven, the Son of man, who is in heaven." John iii, 
13. It sounds like a contradiction, and might at least have 
seemed an unintelligible enigma but for the vision in Daniel, to 
which it manifestly refers, and which fully justifies and explains 
its meaning. 'No man, it is thus found to declare, who simply is 
a man, fallen and degenerate, as mankind now are, ever has 
ascended to heaven ; his progress is all in the contrary direction, 
not upward to heaven, but downward to earth and hell. The Son 
of man, however, in whom the idea of humanity was to be real- 
ized, in whom it is found according to its original type and des- 
tination, as the living image of God, he belongs to the heavenly ; 
that is his proper region ; and when he appears (as he now does) 
on earth, it is because in what properly constitutes his being 
and character, he has come from above. This thought, too, 
it should be observed, respecting the head of the kingdom of 
God, was most fitly introduced in connection with a discourse 
on the necessity of regeneration from above in order to admis- 
sion into the kingdom. The head of the kingdom, the realized 
ideal of humanity, is himself from above ; he is emphatically 
" the new man," " the Lord from heaven ;" and so all who 
hold of him, and are to participate in the rights and blessings 
of his kingdom, must be made new ; their humanity must be 



314 THE PROPHETICAL FUTUEE OF 

regenerated after the pattern of his, and hj virtue of the 
divine power with which he is replenished. Thus only can 
there be a proper correspondence between the head and the 
members, and thus only can the earth be filled and possessed, 
according to the promise, by a kingdom of saints in room of 
the corrupt and brutalizing powers which have so long held 
possession of the field. 

In the same way is to be explained another application of 
the term, which, from overlooking the reference made in it to 
the original prophecy, has very commonly had a mistaken or 
inadequate sense put on it. The passage is in John v, 27, 
where our Lord speaks of himself as having received authority 
from the Father to execute judgment upon men, " because he 
is the Son of man." Taken by itself, the passage contains a 
seeming incongruity. But connect the assertion with the 
prophecy of Daniel, regard it as indicating the divine-human 
(perfectly human, because at the same time really divine) 
person and character of Messiah, through whom the everlast- 
ing kingdom of righteousness was to be brought in, and by 
whom, along with his elect people, the powers of evil were to 
be adjudged and cast out, and then the meaning and reason 
of the statement become obvious. He now announced himself 
as the new man, to whom was to be " put in subjection the 
world to come," and who therefore held at his command both 
the regenerating grace necessary to establish the good, and the 
judicial power and authority commissioned to expel the incor- 
rigibly evil. ]^or can there be any reasonable doubt that it 
was mainly on this account he so commonly designated himself 
in his public discourses by the title of the Son of man, rather 
than any other. He would thereby lead men to regard him 
as the type of what humanity should be, and as come on pur- 
pose to found the kingdom in which, according to ancient 
prophecy, it was to be generally exemplified. And doubtless, 
also, it was a reference to the same prophecy which led to the 
so frequent designation of the kingdom of Messiah as that of 
" the kingdom of heaven." This expression also has respect 
to certain representations in Daniel, and was employed rather 
than ^' the kingdom of David," because more directly pointing 



THE CHURCH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 315 

to the divine and spiritual character of the kingdom, and 
thereby fitted to correct the mistaken notions of the Jews 
respecting the Messiah's reign. But as Son of man, applied 
personally and emphatically to Jesus, was all one with 
Son of David, so what in accordance with some prophecies 
was called the kingdom of God or of heaven, can be no other 
than that elsewhere identified with the throne of David. 

Turning now to the Book of Bevelation, we find the whole 
of its representations regarding the afiairs of the !N"ew Testa- 
ment Church based upon the same views. The book speaks 
throughout of the kingdom and coming of Christ. And in the 
opening vision, which presents us with an ideal delineation of 
Him from whom all its revelations came, his appearance is 
described (precisely as in Daniel) to be that of a "Son of 
man," while the great theme of the revelations is to make 
known how, as such, he was to proceed in bringing into sub- 
jection " the world to come." We have thus at the outset a 
clear indication of the close relationship between the Apoca- 
lypse and the visions of Daniel. When viewed in this con- 
nection, also, the book itself is seen to be of a piece — made up 
of two equally necessary, and though difierent, by no means 
heterogeneous parts. The symbolical description of Christ's 
person at the beginning, and the addresses to the seven 
Churches, unfold the nature of the kingdom over which as Son 
of man he presides, and show how far the idea had begun to 
be realized, how far it had failed in a series of particular 
Churches. This portion is in reality the foundation of all that 
follows, and supplies the standard by which its other descrip- 
tions are to be ruled ; for it brings fully and distinctly out the 
mind of Christ on such important topics as these : what kind 
of persons he would recognize as " the saints " who were to 
possess with him the kingdom, in what manner they were 
called to make good their title to the character, what seduc- 
tive influences and threatening dangers should strive to hinder 
them from attaining it, what prospects of bliss and glory 
awaited them if they did attain it, what condemnation and 
judgments if they failed. It is by what is written on these 
points in the direct addresses that we are to interpret what ia 



316 THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF 

afterward symbolically written concerning the Churcli ; we 
have here the criteria for determining her proper character, 
and discerning between the true and the false. 

Then, in regard to the other and prospective part of the 
book, we find a striking divergence in the form of the repre- 
sentation from that of Daniel, but one that naturally arose 
from the different and more advanced position of the evangel- 
ist, and necessary as a cover under which to present the more 
minute and varied aspects of the future that were now to be 
unfolded. Standing at a point so far removed from the Mes- 
siah's kingdom, Daniel could only have revelations given him 
of its general character and destinies. Even the form under 
which it was imaged to his view was symbolical rather than per- 
sonal ; symbolical of the whole in the first instance, and only 
by inference admitting of personal application to an individual. 
But now that that ideal form had become embodied in a glori- 
ous personality — that the foundations of the kingdom also had 
actually been laid, and matters were in a train for reaching 
the destined consummation — it became necessary in some way 
to distinguish between the head and the members of the 
Church, as also between the Church in a militant and imper- 
fect condition, and the Church prepared for her final inherit- 
ance. This is done without any essential, but only by a 
relative, change in the symbol : the human form is retained 
for the new prospective delineation of the Church, but the 
female, not the mjanly type of the human. Taken complexly, 
the human still makes up the representation of the kingdom ; 
but as the kingdom now falls into two parts, so does the 
symbol which represents it : Christ, the Son of man, the male 
son, {yiov dppeva, Rev. xii, 5,) as he is called to denote the per- 
fection of his manly nature, and the Church the woman ; the 
one the antithesis to the dragon, and the other to the beast. 
For this division there was even from early times a scriptural 
foundation. The relation of God to Israel began under Moses 
to be spoken of in terms borrowed from married life, (Exod. 
xxiv, 15, 16 ; ]^um. xiv, 33,) and in many of the prophets it is 
formally compared to this relation : God is the husband, and 
Israel the wife, (Isa. 1, 1 ; liv, 1 ; Jer. ii, 2, 20 ; Ezek. xvi. 



THE CHUECH AKD KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 317 

xxiii ; Hosea i, iii.) The forty-fiftli psalm, also, and the Song 
of Solomon, are extended representations of the same idea. 
And it meets ns again from time to time in the pages of the 
"New Testament ; in the words of John the Baptist, (John iii, 
29,) and in various parabolical statements of our Lord, (Matt, 
ix, 15 ; xxii, 1 ; xxv,) followed by others of the apostle Paul, 
2 Cor. xi, 2 ; Eph. v, 25-32. But in these latter passages 
Christ, being as truly divine as he is human, occupies the 
place formerly ascribed generally to God; and now also the 
prevailing form is that of the bridegroom on the one side and 
of the bride on the other, as if the union could not properly be 
consummated so long as the Church is in so inferior a condition 
compared with her divine Head, and must stand over till she 
has become complete in number and perfect in holiness. 
Most appropriately therefore the Apocalyptist, whose peculiar 
calling it was to disclose the existing imperfections of the 
Church, the seductions with which she was to be but too suc- 
cessfully plied, and the many trials and humiliations through 
which she must pass on her way to glory, presents her under 
the aspect of a woman — a woman espoused, but not yet mar- 
ried — while struggling with sin and evil, the Lamb's bride, 
but at last, when the troubles of time are over and its corrup- 
tions done away, the Lamb's wife, sharing with Him in all the 
blessings and honors of the kingdom. 

We should note, however, how careful the Apocalyptist is, 
before he exposes the perils and defections of the Church, with 
their sad and fearful issues, to exhibit ideally the Church's 
perfection. He first of all unfolds what she is in calling, what 
she should ever aim to be in character, and what in the con- 
summation she is destined to be in the reality. We have this 
description at the beginning of chap. xii. There she appears 
as a woman in heaven — in the same blissful and elevated 
region with her divine Head, for there her citizenship lies as 
well as his. (Phil, iii, 20.) Not only so, but her condition is in 
full accordance with her place, she is clothed with the sun — 
the grand luminary of heaven, and the uniform emblem of a 
truly divine and celestial glory as contrasted with the darknesa 
and corruption of the world. Ideally therefore the Church 



318 THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF 

has heaven's light and glory for her ovrn according to Isaiah, 
chap. Ix, 1, " Arise, shine ; for thy light is come, and the glory 
of the Lord hath risen on thee." And as a natural conse- 
quence she stands nobly superior to the corrupt attractions of 
what is reckoned glorious on earth ; she feels that she is called 
to higher and better things. Hence she appears not only 
clothed with the sun, but having also the moon under her feet; 
the comparatively little orb which has indeed a measure of 
light and glory, but such only as is derived from the earth, 
and which altogether belongs to the earthly sphere ; fit emblem 
of the riches, the culture, and the honors of the flesh, which all 
perish with the using. These the true Church keeps beneath 
her feet; they are not her real glory or her proper portion. 
Finally, her head is emblazoned A^dth a crown of twelve stars, 
emblems of her proper representatives, the twelve apostles ; 
emblems of them and those they represented as called to shine 
and rule with Chi'ist. Their position also is in the heavenly 
sphere; they are, one and all, by their Christian calling, 
bearers and dispensers of the light of heaven, placed aloffc and 
endowed with their respective gifts that they may exhibit the 
mind and truth of God to those who are sittins: in darkness 
and corruption. What a lofty idea ! Would that the Church 
had from the first kept it steadfastly before her eye, and 
striven with unflagging zeal to have it realized ! How innocu- 
ously should the darts of the adversary then have fallen upon 
her, and from what sloughs of corruption and seas of blood 
should she have been preserved. And would she but do it 
yet ! For the moral pestilence still wastes within her borders, 
and the work of judgment for apostacy is far from having run 
its course. But in this we are anticipating what belongs to 
another department. 

(3.) We turn then to a third point, the last we shall advert 
to in connection with this branch of the subject, the represent- 
ation given in the Apocalypse of the relation of the spiritual 
to the worldly power, or of the kingdom of Christ to the king- 
dom of the prince of this world. 

Proceeding on the deeper insight he has obtained into the 
spiritual region, and the more detailed aspect which it thence 



THE CHURCH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 319 

became necessary to present of spiritual things, the apostle 
here divides between the Church and her divine Head. He 
gives first, (chap, xii,) in the case of the latter, a compressed 
view of the nature and issue of the conflict as carried on in the 
entirely spiritual sphere, of which that afterward to be carried 
on through the Church, on the visible theater of the world, 
was to be on the whole, though not without many grievous 
backslidings and partial failures, a reflex. The representation 
in this first part has necessarily a retrospective as well as a 
prospective aspect, a circumstance not unusual in visions, 
which require to connect the past with the future in order to 
give a comprehensive view of the reality, for example, in 
Daniel's visions of the image and the beasts, and St. John's 
account of the seven-headed beast. The appearance of the 
head of the kingdom is sketched from its commencement. As 
he was to be born of a woman, and through her made under 
the law, so the Church is represented as a woman travailing 
and in pain to be delivered of what was at once her great 
burden and her great hope, the long expected man-child. 
But while she is in this position the dragon, who is simply the 
devil in his relation to the powers of this world, Psa. Ixxiv, 13 ; 
Ezek. xxix, 3, and personified for the time in Herod, stands 
ready to devour, his chance of success being now suspended 
upon the destruction of this child of hope, and his whole 
energy in consequence directed to the accomplishment of that 
object. How likely, to human view, that he should succeed. 
He on the one side being possessed of such enormous power 
that seven crowned heads are needed to represent his might 
on earth, and in heaven the third part of the stars are carried 
off by the sweep of his tail, that is, a large proportion, like a 
third of the world's sjjiritual lights and rnlers, corrupted and 
destroyed by his influence, while on the other all that appears 
is a feeble and helpless child, seemingly an easy prey to the 
devourer. But the destiny of this child is to rule all nations 
with a rod of iron, to rule them so as to break their hostility 
and bring them into subjection to God. And the destiny 
must be fulfilled, for it is of God. Therefore the power and 
malice of the adversary are defeated ; the child, having 



320 THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF 

escaped the dangers, and trinmplied over all the difficulties 
that encompassed it in the earthly sphere, is caught np into 
the heavenly sphere and seated in the very throne of God. 
And now in this higher sphere everything is reversed ; with 
the rise of the Son of man, on the ground of his perfected 
redemption, to be the Head of all principality and power in 
the heavenly places, the fall of the prince of darkness follows 
as its proper counterpart. He is therefore cast down from the 
higher region of power, the conflict having been fought and 
won against him in regard to its fundamental principles, and 
he is reduced to the position of a mere earthly head, so that 
all he can even appear to do of evil is in respect to the body of 
Christ, the Church, during her continuance among the relations 
of sense and time. 

This is of course to be understood as an ideal representation, 
like the rest of the vision, though resting on an historical 
basis. It seems therefore entirely out of place here (with 
various writers, both British and continental) to draw from 
this passage, in conjunction with some others of a like nature, 
the conclusion that, up to the time of Christ's ascension, Satan 
was allowed to mingle freely with the angelic hosts, while 
afterward that liberty was withdrawn. 'Nor is there any 
better foundation for the idea expressed by some, that the 
transition of Satan from heaven to earth indicated an en- 
largement of his influence and operations in the affairs of men. 
The reverse is plainly meant, as throughout the prophetical 
Scriptm'es the symbolical action of falling or being cast down 
from heaven always denotes a loss of power and authority. It 
is Satan's downfall therefore which must here be understood, 
necessarily bringing with it a restraint to his operations, not 
the giving of an additional license or effect to them. If an 
increase in any respect might be thought of it could only be 
in the greater bitterness and guile which he would endeavor 
to infuse into his policy on account of the defeat he had sus- 
tained on the high places of the field. In respect to this he is 
said to have come down " having great wrath." And when 
our Lord declared even while on earth, that by reason of the 
mighty power he exercised, and the work of perfect righteous- 



THE CHUKCH AKD KINGDOM OF CHEIST. 321 

ness and mercy he was performing, "he saw Satan fall like 
lightning from heaven," and that "the prince of the world 
was judged and cast out," (Luke x, 18 ; John xii, 31,) he plainly 
teaches that what is to be understood, and the whole that can 
justly be understood by such language, is this capital abridg- 
ment of power and dominion. We say the whole, for, if taken 
more literally, the different passages would manifestly run 
counter to each other ; what in one place is described as the 
result of Christ's ascension, being in the others represented as 
taking place before it."^ Understood figuratively, the casting 
down of Satan might be connected with different periods, as 
the result it indicated had successive stages ; but, in a compre- 
hensive ideal delineation, it was most fitly connected with our 
Lord's ascension to the right hand of power and glory, as this 
formal elevation on the one side necessarily inferred a corre- 
sponding depression on the other. It is with Christ's personal 
work and history therefore, according to the natural import 
and bearing of the passage, that the statement should here be 
connected, and not with the age of Constantine. And since 
the question has been thus settled as between the respective 
heads of the two kingdoms, how certainly must a like result 
follow to all connected with them ? What occasion can there 
be any more for despondency or doubt as to the issue if there 
be but the eye of faith to discern the divine Kedeemer en- 
throned within the vail, having all angels, principalities, and 
powers made subject to him ? f 

But now, this sure foundation being laid in the heavenly 
sphere, and the triumph on the side of good secured once for 
all, personally, by the Redeemer, the apocalyptist proceeds to 

* It is perfectly gratuitous to represent our Lord's statement in Luke x, 18 (as 
some do, for example, Mr. Birks in his "Outlines," p. 99) as spoken prophetically, 
it is plainly spoken of what was at the time proceeding; and tliongh the figure is 
diiferent, the idea is the same in Col. ii, 15, where the triumphing over princi- 
palities and powers is connected with the death of Clirist. 

f We have taken no special notice of the conflict in the heavenly places being in 
chap, xii, 1, 8 ascribed to Michael and his angels, holding it to have been virtually 
settled by Ode, (De Angelis, p. 1032, seq.,) Yitringa, Hengstenberg, etc., on the 
passage, that Michael is but another name for Christ, a name given him in special 
connection with this great conflict to indicate tlie certainty of bis success grounded 
on his divine nature, for it means, Who is like God? 

21 



322 ^HE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF 

set forth the progress and issues of the conflict in that lower 
sphere, which was still open to the adversary, in the history of 
the Church in the world. Here the comparative advantage of 
the adversary is indicated in the very symbol used to represent 
the object of his malice and guile; the woman, humanity in its 
weaker division, over whom he so fatally triumphed at the 
commencement of the world's history. Some allusion is, doubt- 
less, made to the circumstances of the fall in this part of the 
representation ; but the mystical drama that follows has rather 
for its historical basis the relations of Israel under the old cov- 
enant and the manifold experiences and transactions through 
which they passed. For the evil as well as for the good, the 
materials of the representation are found there. It is with the 
exhibition of the good that the story begins and also ends. It 
discloses what should pertain to the true Church (the chaste 
and faithful spouse) in. her preservation from the assaults of the 
destroyer, her trials, her victories, and final deliverance and 
glory ; but much of the intermediate portion is taken up with 
the other and darker side of the picture : the history of the 
false Church, (the adulterous mother of abominations,) her 
apostacy and corruption, deserved an irrecoverable doom. It 
is, however, with the former and better portion alone of the 
prospective delineations that we have at present to do, as the 
things written of the other belong to what properly lies outside 
the Christian Church, though nominally within — the antichris- 
tian apostacy — and will fall to be considered under our next 
division. 

The Church, then, as represented by the woman, the true 
spiritual mother of children, when pressed with the dangers 
raised against her, flies into the wilderness ; that is, into such 
s. hiding-place as might be found in some secure and silent 
retreat ; a flight that had its first historical exemplification in 
the temporary mthdrawal of Mary and the infant Jesus to 
Egypt, to escape the persecution of Herod. This original 
withdrawal was the sure prelude of many similar expedients 
that should need to be resorted to in the future. And accord- 
ingly, no sooner did the members of the Church become large 
enough to attract the public notice of the world than they were 



THE CHURCH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 323 

scattered abroad, reviled, buffeted, driven from the public 
walks of society, and glad often to find an asylum in what 
were comparatively the dens and caves of the earth. Speaking 
generally, however, her place of retreat might be regarded as 
what is called in Ezekiel (chapter xx) " the wilderness of the 
peoples ;'' the moral deserts of the earth ; in the first instance, 
Rome and the other cities of heathendom, which were the 
world's deserts as compared with the land of Judea, where 
Christianity had its birth, and afterward when the earlier 
pbces of refuge had themselves become theaters of danger or 
bloodshed for the followers of Jesus, the more obscure and un- 
enlightened parts of the empire. Such places of retreat from . 
the world's thorou2:hfares were to be to the true Church in 
Christian times much what the wilderness of old was to Israel, 
refuges of safety at once from outward violence and from moral 
pollution ; and with evident allusion to this, it is said that the 
place was prepared for her by Grod, and that the wings of a 
great eagle were given to bear her to it, (chap, xii, 6, 14, com- 
pared with Exod. xix, 1-4 ; Deut. Ixxii, 11.) In former times, 
the Lord had borne his people as on eagle's wings away from 
the violence, oppression, and contaminating influence of Egypt 
to a place of safety and of wholesome discipline in the wilder- 
ness; and the same was to be done also in the case of the 
Christian Church. The old was substantially to recur again. 
In spite of all the efforts of the adversary to strangle her in her 
birth, she should be preserved and nourished, as with food from 
heaven, for a certain space, the mystical period of one thousand 
two hundred and sixty days.* The adversary, however, fol- 
lows her into her wilderness retreat. He " sends out of his 
mouth a flood after her, that he miglit cause her to be carried 
away by the flood," (verse 15.) This flood is an emblem, not 
of things in the spiritual sphere, such as corrupt doctrines or 
false teachers, for these cannot, according to the symbolical im- 
port of the dragon, be the direct and proper emanations of his 
mouth, but of the vast hordes, the teeming and fluctuating 
masses which the prince of darkness raises up and influences 
to effect his purposes of miscliief, (compare chap, xvii, 15 with 

* See on this number, sec. iii at the close. 



324 THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF 

Psa. cxxiv, 4: ; Jer. xlvi, 8 ; Isa. viii, 8, etc.) These never 
assumed more of a flood-like appearance, or were employed 
\nth a more hostile design than in those ages when the irrup- 
tions, especially of the Germanic tribes, convulsed the whole 
fabric of society, and threatened to bring back a state of uni- 
versal barbarism. Had such a result actually ensued, the 
cause of genuine Christianity had inevitably been lost, for it 
can only maintain its ground and diffuse its regenerating influ- 
ence with proper effect in an orderly and peaceful state of 
thino;s. But the Lord ao-ain restrained the violence of the 
storm. He made "the earth to help the woman," ea7'th being 
taken symbolically for a designation of the world in its more 
settled aspect, as the sea for its periods of heaving, commotion, 
and tumult. The meaning, therefore, is, that what is firm and 
solid in the constitution of the world set bounds to its more 
restless and wayward elements, so that the wild chaos of dis- 
order which for a time prevailed again took shape, and the 
several states of modern Christendom came gradually into 
being. Dui'ing this phase, therefore, of her connection with 
the world, the Church was to be, and by the evidence of his- 
tory actually was, both oppressed and protected, now evil- 
treated, and again screened and saved from the destruction 
meditated against her through the instrumentality of the pow 
ers and kingdoms of the earth. 

But another phase of evil commenced when this was over. 
The cessation of the world-floods by no means exhausted the 
malice and resources of the tempter. " The dragon (it is said, 
verse 17) was wroth with the woman, and went to make war 
mth the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments 
of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ." The words 
too plainly indicate that the dragon had not altogether failed 
in his object by the troubles and disorders he had already 
raised against the Church. At the beginning of the conflict 
it was said generally of her members, that "they overcame 
him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testi- 
mony," (verse 11.) But now the remnant only of the woman's 
seed are spoken of as keeping God's commandments and the 
testimony of Jesus. The war needs to be continued only 



I 



THE CHURCH AND KINGDOM OF CHEIST. 325 

against a portion of the seed, a faithful remnant, implying that 
another and indeed a larger portion had already been won 
over to the cause of the enemy, and were virtually on the 
dragon's side. . The great apostacy in short was to have begun, 
and even made much progress before the dark epoch, marked 
by the np-breaking of the old Roman empire, had run its 
course. How truly the history here also coincides with and 
verifies the prophetic outline, needs no proof to intelligent 
Christians. 

The descriptions that follow in several succeeding chapters 
may be regarded as an expansion of the announcement con- 
tained in this last verse of chapter xii ; they give a symbolical 
representation of the kind of war waged b}' the beast against 
the woman, the unflinching resistance given to it on the part 
of the true seed, the honor and glory they in consequence 
received from God, and the judgments sent down to avenge 
their cause, and punish the apostacy and wickedness of that 
other portion of her seed who were to take part with the adver- 
sary. It is here that the seven-headed beast rises first into 
view ; for it was only now that the Church was to come into 
conflict with those later operations of the worldly power which 
it was the more special design of the Apocalypse to unfold. 
But as the conflict had, in realitj^, begun before that, and was 
even coeval with the birth of the 'New Testament Church, 
therefore the representation is here also in part retrospective ; 
as is evident from the seven heads which embrace the whole of 
the successive phases of the worldly power, and perhaps also 
from the period assigned (chap, xiii, 5) to his dominion, forty 
and two months, or one thousand two hundred and sixty days, 
the very same period during which the Church w^as to be in 
the wilderness, (chap, xii, 6.) But the sojourn of the Church 
there, as we have said, was the immediate result of what took 
place on our Lord's ascension, and embraces, not merely what 
ensued after the dragon sent forth the flood, or multitudinous 
hosts after her into the wilderness, but tlie whole of her trials 
and contendings there. If this number, therefore, is not 
entirely symbolical, and even if symbolical but not arbitrarily 
used, its employment here must be regarded as indicating the 



326 THE PEOPHETICAL FUTURE OF 

past as well as the future ascendency of the worldly power in 
respect to the Church. But it is the future that is more par- 
ticularly depicted ; the actings of the worldly power after it 
had begun to assume its last head. And here, first of all, the 
striking peculiarity is mentioned, that one of its heads appeared 
to be as it were wounded to death, (verse 3.) This we take 
(with Auberlen) to mean, that a change in regard to the 
worldly power's ostensible relation to the Church (for in that 
respect alone is it represented under the aspect of a beast) was 
to take place ; in one of the forms of its manifestation it was 
not, indeed, to be actually and properly killed, but to appear 
as if it were wounded to death : that is, to drop for a season 
its wonted appearance of hostility to the cause and kingdom of 
God ; to cease for a time to act as a beast ; which it could only 
do by assuTiing either a truly religious or a professedly reli- 
gious character. ITow something that precisely answers to this 
change did take place about the period in the Church's history 
to which the symbolical delineation refers : the period when 
the sixth head of the beast tended toward the seventh and last, 
when the empire began to totter to its fall, and fresh races 
strove to form themselves into new states and dynasties. It 
seemed then as if the beast had received a deadly wound ; for 
in the last stages of the old Roman empire, and in the forma- 
tive epoch of the new states, the beast apparently passed into 
the woman, through the formal reception of Christianity by 
the ruling powers. The beast then, as is stated in the corre- 
sponding passage in chap, xvii, 8, 11, " was not, and yet was ;" 
for the deadly wound w^as presently healed ; the old spirit of 
contrariety to the mind of God and conformity to the flesh and 
the world soon returned though under another form, and as a 
kind of Christianized paganism. I^ay, and to mark the char- 
acter of this modern heathenism, its more subtle, demon-pos- 
sessed, artfully-contrived nature, the beast is said to come now 
not as formerly from the sea, but " from the abyss :" as if in a 
state of closer union with the power and cunning of the adver- 
sary. So that the work of self-deification began to proceed 
anew, (chapter xiii, 4, " They worshiped the beast, saying, 
"Who is like unto the beast ?") and the blaspheming of God, 



THE CHURCH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 32T 

(namely, by the usurpation of divine prerogatives,) and the war 
against the saints. It is even said respecting the latter, (verse 
Y,) that it was given him to overcome them ; the reverse of 
what had been testified regarding the early part of the conflict, 
when it was said (chapter xii, 11) that they overcame him by 
,the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony. 
]^ow on the other hand he overcomes ihem^ which of course 
implies that they renounced their confidence in the blood of 
the Lamb, and played false with the word of their testimony. 
They did so, not by utterly casting off the profession of the 
faith, for then they would simply have belonged to the worldly 
power itself; but by falling in with the secularized Christianity 
which that power had espoused ; by ceasing, in short, to be the 
proper bride of the Lamb, and becoming (as is fully represented 
in chapter xvii) the whore borne up by the beast. As in the 
world before the flood, and in Israel before the captivity, the 
Church was to join hands with the world, and assuming an 
essentially worldly position, was to set itself against the real 
interests of God's kingdom while still professing to have them 
at heart. 

Such was to be the result of this new phase of the worldly 
power, what was to come from the healing of the wound of the 
beast, a new and master-stroke of Satanic policy. The dragon 
would no longer openly devour the woman, which had ceased 
any longer to be possible ; but by bringing her into subjection 
to his own power would rather, through her instrumentality, 
carry on his purposes of mischief. And the plot has wonderful 
success ; in this new form the beast is found to have even more 
than recovered what he had lost by the wound. For now it is 
said, " Power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, 
and nations. And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship 
him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the 
Lamb slain from the foundation of the world," verses 7, 8. 
An all but universal dominion, in struggling and holding out 
against which, it is immediately intimated, the faith and 
patience of the saints were to have their grand trial, verse 10. 
And we have no doubt, with reference to the same, the ap- 
parent anomaly in chap, xvii, 11 is to be explained, where we 



328 THE PROPHETICAL FUTUEE OF 

read, " And the beast that was, and is not, even he (or he also) 
is the eighth, (namely, kingdom,) and is of the seven, and goeth 
into perdition." So great was the power and success to be 
gained by the change of policy, and especially by the Lamb- 
like beast, which was to come to his aid, that the last 
head of the beast has the appearance of more than a mere 
head ; it is like the beast itself in its entireness, a concentrated 
form of the whole, and so less properly the seventh, as orig- 
inally formed out of the ten horns into which the Roman 
empire fell, than an eighth, though it was still of the seven, 
because it sprung out of them, and was in reality a prolonga- 
tion of their complex being. I^ot only was the clay of Daniel's 
vision to take a distinct form, but the clay itself, as with 
plastic powers, and by the reception of certain Christian ele- 
ments, was to undergo a transformation, such as should give it 
a new and more formidable character. 

If in this part of the representation we find a characteristic 
difference between the Apocalypse and the vision of Daniel, it 
becomes still more marked in what immediately follows. St. 
John not only saw further than Daniel into the changes which 
the worldly power in its later stages was to undergo, but he 
also had a revelation given him of an ally which that power 
was ultimately to obtain, and of which no trace is to be found 
in the earlier and more compressed predictions of Daniel. 
This ally- is described under the symbol of a second beast 
coming up out of the earth, having two horns like a lamb, but 
speaking as a dragon, xiii, 11. The rest of the description 
refers to the doings of the power symbolized by this image ; 
but it is by the image itself that the essential nature of the 
power is to be determined, and the relation in which it was to 
stand to the other powers mentioned in the vision. JSTow, as 
it is a fundamental principle in the interpretation of propheti- 
cal symbols that there must be uniformity of meaning ascribed 
to them in the things wherein they agree, there are certain 
points in the description given above which, from their coin- 
cidence with things going before, leave little room to doubt 
as to the proper character of this power. The first is the 
name, a beast, which proves it to be entirely of a worldly 



THE CHURCH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 329 

character, like a beast looking downward to the earth, having 
the world for its god. Throughout the visions both of Daniel 
and the Apocalypse the beasts are symbols of what belongs to 
the earthly and human as contradistinguished from the divine 
and heavenly sphere. The several beasts in Daniel denote 
simply human governments, or the worldly power in its suc- 
cessive phases, as is done also by the other beast in the Apoc- 
alypse with its many heads and horns ; and when a power 
rising up among them and aspiring to something higher, laying 
claim, though unjustly, to the spiritual and divine, had to be 
indicated, it is described as so far differing from the others 
that it had eyes like those of a man. Here, however, there is 
no such appearance ; the form is altogether beastly, and conse- 
quently the power represented by it is only human and 
worldly. A second point is its origin • it came up out of the 
earth, from beneath, not from above, and so, like the first 
beast, was to be entirely terrene in its character. It differed, 
however, in this respect, that it appeared to spring not from 
the sea — image of the world in its heaving, disordered, and 
tumultuous state — but from the solid earth ; that is, the world 
in a state of settled order and fitness for civilization. Terrene 
therefore as this power was going to be, it was yet to possess 
earthly elements of a higher kind than the other, properties 
more refined, and distinctive of humanity in its advanced and 
orderly condition. Thirdly, it had horns like a lanib^ horns 
the symbol of power, but the horns of a lamb, among beasts 
the emblem of what is gentle, harmless, and engaging; and 
therefore disposed to exercise the power, not in deeds of vio- 
lence, or with overawing displays of majesty and force, but by 
methods of a suasive kind, and suited to a peaceful and settled 
state of things. Perhaps something even more specific is indi- 
cated, a studied imitation of the lamb with seven horns, for- 
merly mentioned, (chap, v, 6,) an affectation of Christ-like 
virtues or a striving after the lamb-like qualities which appear 
in their highest perfection in Christ. We can scarcely doubt 
indeed that this more specific reference was intended. But, 
lastly, notwithstanding this lamb-like appearance in regard to 
the form which this power was to assume for its exercise, the 



330 THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF 

spirit directing and animating it was to be widely different: 
" He spake as a dragon.'''^ It was to be by speech that the 
beast was to give indication of what it was, and by the charac- 
ter of its speech it was to be found in the strictest sense from 
beneath, an instrument of Satan, not of God ; earthly, sensual, 
devilish. 

There can be no certainty in the interpretation of symbols 
if these traits do not determine the power here described to be 
simply a power of this world, not spiritual or ecclesiastical, 
which necessarily infers either a real or an assumed connection 
with the divine, but one both actually and ostensibly holding 
of the world. It has been, we think, the great error of writers 
in this country to give too little heed to such fundamental and 
decisive characteristics in the appearance of the symbol, and 
to make account rather of dependent and subsidiary points. 
They have hence commonly adopted the opinion of its being 
an ecclesiastical power, and have sought to identify it with the 
priesthood of Home. Indeed this opinion very naturally grew 
out of a previous misapprehension, the identification of the 
first beast with the papal sovereignty of Rome ; and there are 
not wanting things in the description now before us which 
admit of being readily applied to the Eomish priesthood, if 
only a proper foundation existed for such an application. But 
it is there precisely that the fanciful and groundless nature of 
the opinion discovers itself. And the more fundamental and 
strictly exegetical treatment which the subject has received on 
the continent has led to the general adoption (among others 
by Hofmann, Hengstenberg, Auberlen) of what seems to us 
the correct view, (though Graussen and Ebrard still hold to the 
other.) According to this view the power here symbolized is 
that of worldly wisdom, comprehending everything in learning, 
science, and art, which human nature of itself in its civilized 
state can attain to — the worldly power in its more refined and 
spirit-like elements — its more gifted sages and seers. There 
can be no doubt that it is the same power which in three sub- 
sequent passages (chap, xvi, 13 ; xix, 20 ; xx, 10) is called ex- 
pressly " the false prophet," so that, as was already indicated 
by the power of sj>eech ascribed to it, it belongs to the intel- 



THE CHUECH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 331 

lectual and moral, not to the physical or political sphere. But 
the marked separation in those passages between this false 
prophet and the whore, or the corrupt Church, and the equally 
marked intimacy of connection between the false prophet and 
the beast, point to the conclusion we have otherwise arrived 
at, of its having to do with prophecy, not in the ecclesiastical 
but in the worldly sense. The things which concern the 
whore, as forming a class by themselves, have a distinct repre- 
sentation ; though nearly connected with the beast, and for a 
time serving herself of this, she still is judged and destroyed 
apar^. But the false prophet never appears separate from the 
beast ; he comes upon the stage as the mere servant and tool 
of the latter, and the two both work together, and perish in 
the same condemnation. They are alike therefore in origin, 
in character, in aim, and in destiny ; an embodiment, only in 
different respects, of the sensual, groveling, ungodly spirit of 
the world. 

This second lamb-horned beast, then, is a personified repre- 
sentation of the world's gnosis — " the gnosis, falsely so called," 
of the Apostle Paul ; and hence the power professing and exer- 
cising it is emphatically the false prophet. False, not because 
always or necessarily propounding things in themselves untrue, 
but because actuated by a wrong spirit in its investigations and 
pursuits, cultivating the talents, studying the works, plying 
the manifold resources of nature in a state of practical divorce 
from God and the interests of salvation as if those were alone 
sufficient to bless the soul and render the world a scene of sat- 
isfaction and delight. The teachings of such a spirit of proph- 
ecy are false, even when setting forth what is in itself true, 
because they ignore the existence or belie the testimony of 
what is emphatically the truth. Yet a formal opposition to 
the truth, though it might certainly be expected in part to 
characterize the operations of this power, is what it should 
rather, by the description given of it, seek to avoid. The 
lamb-like horns imply as much, indicating that the power in 
question would strive to conceal its base origin and character, 
and even work upward to a resemblauce of that which has its 
true embodiment in the Divine Author of Christianity. The 



332 * THE PKOPHETICAL FUTURE OF 

same thing is also implied in the note given of the relative 
period of its manifestation ; the period, namely, of the last 
times of the worldly power : " He exerciseth," it is said, verse 
12, " all the power of the first beast before him, and causeth 
the earth and them that dwell therein (all the worldly-minded) 
to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed." 
If the deadly wonnd of the beast be, as formerly represented, 
the professed reception of Cliristianity by the raling powers of 
the world by which they went, or seemed as if they went over 
to the side of Christ ; and if the healing of that wound be their 
return to an essentially ungodly state, a kind of Christianized 
paganism, then this second beast's appearing in connection 
with the healed condition of the other, presents it to our view 
as a power more especially of the latter days^ attaining to 
strength when the world itself had attained to the likeness of 
a formal Christianity. It was only then, indeed, and by reason 
of this very connection with the Christian name, that the wis- 
dom and learning of the world could come to be peculiarly 
dangerous to the people of Christ, and be apt to supplant the 
truth that is in him. In its old and avowedly pagan form it 
was too palpably antagonistic in its natm'e to possess much of 
this character ; and hence the philosophic class in ancient 
times either stood entirely aloof from Christianity, or hatched 
abortive schemes of doctrine which met with the strong and 
steadfast reprobation of the Church. But matters have pre- 
sented another aspect since the kingdoms of the world came to 
assume somewhat of the Cliristian type. Since then, a com- 
paratively sober, refined, and softened spirit has been widely 
diffused. The prophets of the world have in many respects 
caught the reflection of that which is from above ; and the lit- 
erature, art, and science which they have been giving to the 
world, not only render many a formal homage to Christianity, 
but partake much, also, of the elevating influence which has 
flowed from it. 

Yet with all this change to the better in the world's proph- 
ets they are the world's still, breathing its spirit, working for 
its interests, and, out of regard to its ends and objects, evacu- 
ating or setting aside the more essential truths of the Gospel. 



THE CHURCH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 333 

The speech is ever such as befits the dragon's mouth ; ana the 
grand tendency of its teaching, of its discoveries and inven- 
tions, is to lead men to worship the beast, to make a god of 
this present world. It even teaches them that dwell on the 
earth, as St. John most characteristically described it before- 
hand, " that they should make an image to the beast which 
had the wound by a sword and did live. And he had power 
to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the 
beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not 
worship the image of the beast should be killed," etc., verses 
14 and 15. The image here spoken of, which was undoubtedly 
suggested by the image of the Roman emperors, " denotes," as 
Auberlen has excellently interpreted, " the deification of the 
world, and the worldly power. And the false prophet's 
breathing living breath into this image, with much felicity 
describes how the false teaching has skill to give to the foolish 
idolatry of the creature's deification, a kind of spiritual, reason- 
able, philosophical impress ; the worldly spirit with its revela- 
tions is this dead and now again life-breathing idol deity, be- 
fore which the whole world does homage. It is (he means in 
its actual tendencies and final outgoings) the new heathenism, 
sinking down again to the deification of nature and humanity ; 
and it is impossible to predict what foolish and beastly forms 
it may yet assume." The extraordinary workings ascribed to 
this power in the prosecution of its aim, which are designated 
miracles, and in which it is even said to call down fire from 
heaven, point to its great achievements in nature, and also to 
its lofty pretensions, seeming to rival those of the real witnesses 
of God's truth, and the faithful expounders of his will to men. 
Chap, xi, 5. Kothing in heaven or earth should appear to be 
above the reach of its inquiries and the skill of its hand. And 
the exclusion from merchandise, the assignation even to death, 
(by which must be understood, not literal, but social or polit- 
ical death, civil martyrdom, for in this sense only could death 
with any propriety be ascribed to the speech of a prophet,) 
which it should have power to appoint to as many as would 
not worship the beast, disclose the extreme eagerness and the 
wonderful success with which this last and highest form of the 



334: THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF 

worldly spirit should drive after its object. The saying that 
" the world loves its own," should receive through it the most 
striking exemplification ; and those who were not of the world, 
and held by the faith of Christ, would be disliked, shoved into 
comers, maligned, and viKfied. Who that is but moderately 
acquainted with the history of modern Christendom, or has 
any discernment of the signs of the times, can fail to perceive 
how much the tendency of the world's culture is in this direc- 
tion ; how little it commonly sets by the interests of salvation ; 
nay, how jealously it eyes such as give these their proper place ! 
And rising, as it continually does, in its achievements and con- 
sciousness of power, growing incessantly in its command over 
the elements of nature, and the materials of earthly comfort 
and enjoyment, who can but fear that its future progress may 
be marked by times yet more perilous than hitherto, and more 
audaciously opposed to the claims and spirit of the Gospel ! 
It would only require an intensifying of powers already in 
extensive operation, and a quite conceivable development of 
the world's culture, to make the unswerving profession of 
Christianity, and the carrying out of its heavenly spirit into 
the various relations of life, a matter of constant sacrifice, and 
of virtual exclusion from all the more prominent positions of 
worldly life. 

So far we can, without material difficulty, find our way to the 
import and application of this part of the apocalyptic vision. 
On the number of the beast and of his name we refrain from 
making any remark at present ; as indeed we have little more 
to offer than an analogical probability, which may be better 
noticed, in connection with other numbers, at the close of Sec- 
tion III. The result, however, as regards the Church's relation 
to the power and kingdoms of the world, is sufficiently humili- 
ating as to the past, and not without some anxious forebodings 
in respect to the future. The last, and in some sense Chris- 
tianized form of the beast has already proved, in accordance 
with the view presented beforehand in the Apocalypse, a more 
dangerous and formidable opponent to the cause of God than 
it was in its earlier and more palpably antichristian manifesta- 
tions. And what is afterward said of this beast itself in chap. 



THE CHURCH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 335 

xvii, 14-17; xix, 11, sec[.^ (of which particular notice will be 
taken in the next section,) together with what is here said of 
his ally, the false prophet, seems plainly to indicate that the 
warfare of the Church with this dragon-like power is far from 
being ended, and probably, in some of its aspects, has not yet 
reached its climax. It may be doubted whether there be any 
just foundation for the idea entertained by some, and among 
others by the writer recently quoted, (Auberlen,) that days of 
active and violent persecution still await the Church, and that 
only by the suffering of blood she must expect to win her 
latest, as she did her earlier, victories. In so far as this appre- 
hension is based on the description of the .false prophet, it 
seems to be without any just foundation ; as it is against the 
proper nature of the symbol to connect it with acts of external 
violence and corporeal infliction. The conflict in its later 
stages is more likely to occupy itself with the higher region of 
thought and feeling, and to be primarily a war of opinion, 
though it may also carry in its train certain political and social 
disturbances. The tactics of the adversary may henceforth be 
expected to grow in subtlety and refinement. The more Satan 
succeeds in transforming himself into an angel of light — the 
more he can lead his servants to exchange obsolete notions and 
brute force for weapons more accordant with the views of cul- 
tivated minds, and less directly opposed to the nature of the 
Gospel — ^the more disastrous is likely to be their effect in 
impeding the progress and thinning the ranks of genuine 
Christianity. 

But however that may be, the issue of the struggle is not 
doubtful. The same inspired pen which has so wonderfully 
traced its general character and progress unfolds in the most 
distinct manner the triumph of the kingdom of Christ, and 
the irretrievable ruin both of the beast and the false prophet. 
We reserve what is written on this point for the next section, 
where we must consider the judgment of Babylon, which is so 
intimately connected with that of the other two that they can 
with no propriety be examined apart. But the most cursory 
glance into the representations which follow is enough to 
satisfy us that if the seer of Patmos was a watchman of the 



336 THE PEOPHETICAL FUTURE OF 

niglit, he was also a herald of the approaching morn, and that, 
amid all the combinations of malice and guile which were to 
be arrayed against the Church of God, he foresaw the higher 
elements of power were still to be with her. l^ay, no sooner 
has he described the appearance and proceedings of the lamb- 
like beast than he points attention to the real Lamb on Monnt 
Zion, with his noble army of one hundred and forty-four thou- 
sand tried and faithful followers, (chap, xiv.) By these are 
represented the truly effective forces, powers, and agencies, 
mightier by far than those which were symbolized by the 
beast and false prophet. And by means of them changes are 
accomplished and processes of judgment carried forward which 
termina^te only with the iinal overthrow of the adversary, and 
the exaltation of a pure and faithful Church to the possession 
of the inheritance. 

SECTION II 

THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF THE CHURCH AI^D KINGDOM 
OF CHRIST, IN RELATION TO THE CHARACTER, WORKING, 
AND FATE OF THE ANTICHRISTIAN APOSTASY. 

When the Church or kingdom of Christ and the kingdoms 
of this world are viewed in their original character and relative 
positions, the connection between them, as we have seen, is one 
simply of antagonism. They meet on the stage of the world's 
history, but only to contend with each other, not to coalesce or 
to merge their respective properties in a state of things com- 
mon to both. The relation, therefore, when so considered, is 
necessarily of an external nature. It is that of kingdoms 
moving in different spheres, animated by a different spirit, 
and embracing not only different but conflicting interests, so 
that the progress and triumph of the one inevitably carries 
along with it the conquest and subversion of the other. But 
there is also another and more internal relationship, of which 
we have already had occasion to notice several intimations in 
prophecy, and which was to arise from an unnatural coalition 
between the two parties, or rather between the apparent, not 
the real, power on the one side, and the antagonistic power on 



THE CHURCH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 337 

the otlier. The kingdom of God, like its divine Author, can- 
not change in respect to its essential elements, or cease to he 
opposed to the powers which are Satanic in their origin and 
bestial in their character. But it might appear to do so after 
it had obtained a distinct organization, and assumed an out- 
standing position in the world. It might, in the hands of 
its ostensible representatives and agents, renounce its oppo- 
sition and become more or less identified with the operations 
of the worldly power. ^Nor was it from the first by any means 
unlikely that such a result should take place, for Satan's policy 
lias always been to corrupt what is of God when he has failed 
to destroy it. And situated as the Church of Christ is in the 
world, beleaguered on every hand by the powers of evil 
witliin, liable to be drawn aside by the remains of indwelling 
sin, and without alternately pressed by the violence and the 
blandishments of those in power, it was not to be wondered at 
if the world should make encroachments upon the Church, 
and the adversary should find for himself an interest and an 
agency under the very banner of heaven. 

§ 1. The Antichrist as represented in Daniel both Typically and 

Antitypically. 

The prophecies of Daniel, which in Old Testament Scrip- 
ture contained the most distinct and varied perspective of the 
more public relations of Christian times, did not fail also to 
exhibit this feature of the distant future. As might have been 
expected, no indication is given of it in the vision of ISTebu- 
chadnezzar, which, in accordance with its general character, 
presents merely an external aspect of the different monar- 
chies ; and as regards the relation of Messiah's kingdom to the 
others, gives prominence only to its prevailing might, absolute 
universality, and endless continuance. But it is otherwise in 
respect to the vision of the seventh chapter, which was com- 
municated to Daniel himself. Under the last worldly mon- 
archy, in the times of which the kingdom of heaven was to 
begin to lay claim to the world, a representation is given of a 

remarkable change that was to take place in the former, by 

22 



338 THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF 

whicli it was to a certain extent to throjv off its bestial appear- 
ance and become assimilated to that of the divine kingdom, 
though still retaining its essential contrariety to it. Before, 
however, looking at this representation we may glance at 
another in the subsequent visions of Daniel, which is so far 
related to it that the things it describes formed the nearest 
approach to a typical exhibition of the more distant future to 
be found in ancient times. Generally speaking, the kingdoms 
of the world with which the covenant-people came into con- 
tact aimed only at an external supremacy and control over 
them ; they did not interfere with the internal affairs of the 
religious polity of Israel, or set their hearts on establishing a 
conformity between it and the religions of heathendom. But 
in the periods intervening between the return from Babylon 
and the coming of Messiah the worldly power was to quit its 
outward position and force its way within. It was in one 
remarkable instance to lay its hand upon the very life and 
spirit of the theocratic constitution of Israel, with the view of 
bringing this into formal agreement with the state of things in 
its own territory. And both because it was to form a some- 
what singular turn in the affairs of the old covenant, and to 
afford the nearest parallel these were to present to the most 
singular and perilous evolution in the future history of Christ's 
kingdom, a very prominent exhibition was given of it in the 
later visions of Daniel. We meet with it first in chap, viii, in 
the vision of the ram and the he-goat, which are explained to 
mean, the one the kingdom of the Medes and Persians, the 
other the kingdom of Greece. Then, after quickly passing 
over the subjugation of the former kingdom by the latter, the 
rapid conquests of the Grecian kingdom, and its division on 
the death of its founder into four smaller monarchies, a power 
is described as rising up out of one of these, symbolized by 
a little horn, which was to wax great and do extraordinary 
things, especially toward what is called the pleasant land or 
the land of beauty. By this is undoubtedly meant the land of 
Canaan, (compare Ezek. xx, 6, 15,) and of the operations of 
this power there it is said, verses 10-12, " And it waxed great, 
to the host of heaven ; and it cast down of the host and of the 



THE CHURCH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 339 

stars to the ground, and stamped upon them. And he magni- 
fied himself even to the prince of the host ; and hj him the 
daily (or continual, namely, burnt-offering) was taken away, 
and the place of his sanctuary was cast down. And the host 
(so it should be rendered) was given (namely, to him) along 
with the daily sacrifice, because of transgression, and the truth 
was cast down to the ground ; and it (namely, the horn) prac- 
tised and prospered." The host in this last verse must be the 
same as in verses 10, 11 ; it must be the Lord's host, the cove- 
nant-people, considered in their ideal character, as possessed 
of a theocratic constitution, and forming, amid the heathen 
kingdoms of this world, a kind of heavenly constellation. 
]^otwithstanding this elevated position, however, violence was 
to be done to it by the bold and aspiring power represented 
under the little horn : it was to suffer a humiliating prostra- 
tion, though, as is presently explained in verses 13, 14, only 
for a comparatively brief season. And in regard to the reason 
of this dreadful reverse and temporary invasion of the worldly 
power on the divine order and prerogatives, it is said in the 
explanatory verses toward the end of the chapter that it was 
to take place " when transgressors should have come to the 
full ;" that while his power should be mighty, yet it should 
" not be by his own power ;" plainly meaning that the iniquity 
harbored and practised among the covenant-people was what 
should call forth the visitation, and that the power which was 
to work so disastrously was really lent by God for the occasion 
as an instrument of vengeance. And again in chap, xi, where 
the operations of the same power are chiefly detailed, the king 
in question is not only described as having " indignation 
against the holy covenant," but also as " having intelligence 
with them that forsake it," (verse 30,) and ^'corrupting by 
flatteries such as do wickedly against the covenant," (verse 
32,) while the design of the whole on the part of God is " to 
try them, and purge them, and make them white," (verse 35.) 
It is evident, by a comparison of all the passages bearing on 
the subject, that the period referred to was to be one of deep 
backsliding and apostasy among the covenant-people, and that 
this was to be taken advantage of by the worldly power then 



340 THE PEOPHETICAL FUTUKE OF 

in immediate contact with them for the purpose of breaking 
up the commonwealth of Israel, and reducing it internally to 
a level with the states of heathendom. Such certainly was the 
occasion and aim of the proceedings carried on against the 
people of Israel by Antiochus Epiphanes, as described in the 
books of Maccabees. The origin of the whole is ascribed to a 
Hellenizing party in Israel, who introduced the Grecian cul- 
ture and games, and thought that strength and safety were to 
be acquired by assimilating their manners and customs to those 
of their more polished neighbors (1 Mac. i, 11-15, 43-53; 
2 Mac. iv, T-20.) This spirit of defection had invaded also 
the priesthood, so that some of the priests even assumed 
Grecian names, and the office of high-priest was made matter 
of merchandise. It was the world in its baser forms entering 
into the sanctuary of God, and in Antiochus, a fitting repre- 
sentative of the world, it reached a climax of presumption and 
wickedness. He is beyond doubt the power that, in con- 
nection with the Grecian monarchy, was to act so lawless and 
violent a part against the covenant. It is hard to say what 
precisely was the object of this man in many of his proceed- 
ings, for they not unfrequently resembled more the doings of 
a madman than those of a reasonable being, on which account 
the epithet EpiTnanes (the mad) was often substituted for 
JFJpiphanes (the illustrious.) But from his applying to himself 
on some of his coins the epithet of Theos^ (God,) and on the 
reverse of others exhibiting the likeness of Jupiter, taken in 
connection with the general character of his reign, it would 
seem that he identified himself with the Olympian Jupiter, 
and thought himself justified in resorting to any measures for 
the purpose of establishing the worship of this deity, and along 
with it his own absolute supremacy. He prosecuted this 
design also among the Jews, and in the course of his opera- 
tions succeeded not only in inflicting the most revolting cruel- 
ties, but also in polluting, through the instrumentality of the 
Hellenizing party, the altar and temple at Jerusalem with the 
foulest abominations. " He did according to his will, and 
exalted himself, and magnified himself above every god, and 
spoke marvelous things against the God of gods, and prospered 



THE CHURCH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 341 

till the indignation was accomplislied," (Dan. xi, 36.) It was 
therefore quite a peculiar relation which the worldly power 
held for a season in the person of this Antiochus to the king- 
dom of God in Israel. It occupies essentially the same rela- 
tive place in the third worldly kingdom that antichrist was to 
do in the fourth, and has hence been generally designated the 
typical antichrist. There is the more reason for viewing it 
thus, as in some of the descriptions of antichrist in 'New Testa- 
ment Scripture, in that especially of 2 Thess. ii, 4, seq., the 
very words are used in which Antiochus and his outrageous 
proceedings are described by Daniel. But of this, occasion 
will be found to speak afterward. 

We revert then to the description of a similar kind, though 
pointing to a later period, which is found in the seventh chap- 
ter of Daniel, (verses 8, 20, 21, 24, 25.) The period is that of 
the latter stages of the fourth kingdom, subsequent to the ten- 
fold division into which it was to fall, and so the power de- 
scribed must be posterior to the Christian era ; it must be not 
the typical, but the real antichrist. This power is described, 
precisely as the other, under the emblem of a horn ; at first a 
little horn, but presently waxing great so as to pluck up by 
the roots three of the horns out of which it sprang, and differ- 
ing also from the others, nay, approximating in appearance to 
the kingdom which was from above, since it had eyes like the 
eyes of a man, and a mouth speaking great things, (verse 8.) 
How far, however, the reality was from corresponding with 
this appearance — how much similarity of form (as might natur- 
ally have been suspected from the manner of its origin) was 
assumed as a cloak to mask the most intense contrariety of 
spirit — was plainly brought to light in the explanation given in 
the subsequent parts of the vision. There we find that this 
horn or power was to be entirely of the same spirit with those 
among which it should come up, and was to form, indeed, the 
concentration of all the enmity and ungodliness by which they 
were in common characterized. While he was to be diverse 
from them in having eyes like a man's, his look was to be 
more stout than his fellows, and he was to make war with the 
saints and prevail against them (verses 20, 21.) " He shall be 



342 THE PROPHETICAL FUTUEE OF 

diverse from the first," it is added, verses 24, 26, "and lie 
shall subdue three kings. And he shall speak words against 
the Most High, and shall wear ont the saints of the Most 
High, and think to change times and laws ; and thej shall be 
given into his hand nntil a time, and times, and the dividing 
of time. But the judgment shall sit, and they shall take away 
his dominion to consume and to destrov it nnto the end." 

In this description much is purposely left vague and myste- 
rious ; but there are a few points wMch admit of being clearly 
determined from it. 1. It is first distinctly intimated, that the 
power of which it speaks, the last oifspiing and development 
of the fourth worldly monarchy, was to be distinguished by 
many of the higher qualities of earthly goodness ; by human- 
like culture and adornment. The eyes as of a man bespeak 
this ; for the spirit of life and intelligence is in the eye ; and if 
the eyes had been altogether those of a man, then the power 
symbolized would, in spirit, have realized the proper ideal of 
humanitv : it would have been the Divine kino^dom itself. 
But since the eyes were not actually man's, but only like those 
of a man, it indicates an approach merely to the true pattern ; 
such a resemblance as fallen human nature, by the cultivation 
of its own powers and the skillful use of its means and oppor- 
tunities, might of itself accomplish. So that in respect to art 
and science, general culture and refinement, and the various 
elements of social order and enjoyment, this last development 
of the earthly power should constitute an advance upon those 
which preceded it. Nay, considering that before its full forma- 
tion, at least, if not as the very condition of its existence, the 
truly Divine kingdom, represented by Him who had the 
proper being as well as the likeness of a Son of man, must have 
begun to diffuse itself in the world, it was but natural to infer 
that the human-like power would avail itself of many elements 
"presented to its hand by this higher kingdom, and through 
these work up the appearance of things to a closer resemblance 
of the true pattern. The more it could take into its system of 
the/i^rms of the Divine, the more would its aim be accomp- 
lished of looking like this. And the mouth speaking great 
things, or making high claims and pretensions, seems not 



THE CHURCH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 343 

doubtfully to indicate, tliat such would be the case ; for after 
the introduction of those things, which were to constitute the 
proper greatness and well-being of humanity, no power could 
well arrogate to itself the title or possess the appearance of the 
truly human, without assimilating to itself much that bore this 
loftier impress. The higher qualities, therefore, which were to 
distinguish this singular power, must have derived something 
from the heavenly as well as the earthly, so as to form a pecu- 
liar compound of flesh and spirit. 2. On the other hand, there 
comes plainly out, as a second point in the description, the 
jntense worldliness and God-opposing character of this power ; 
it was still to have the essential spirit of the beast, and that in 
a state of the greatest virulence and energy. This appears, 
first of all, from the manner of its origination and growth, 
springing up simply as a fresh horn of the beast, and with such 
vitality as to pluck up by the roots three of the existing horns. 
Worldliness in full life and vigor is evidently the least that can 
be understood by such a symbolical representation : the earthly, 
sensual, self-idolizing spirit in its ripeness. But the same thing 
appears also from the actions ascribed to this power ; making 
war with the saints and prevailing against them, even wearing 
them out by the keenness and constancy of its opposition, and 
in the highest spirit of self-deification speaking words against 
the Most High, and changing times and laws. Such things 
plainly bespeak, not only an unabated, but even an increased 
contrariety to the mind and will of God ; the higher culture 
and the nearer approach in appearance to the Divine kingdom 
which this power was to assume should but serve, as it were, 
to whet its appetite and inflame its zeal against the real inter- 
ests of that kingdom. But the very circumstance of its having 
assumed something of an apparent resemblance to the higher 
power, and by dint of cultivation and art changed the original 
beast-like form into a kind of human aspect, necessarily implied 
the adoption of a different sort of policy in the prosecution of 
its ungodly measures from what had been practiced in the ear- 
lier stages of its history. If the old spirit of opposition to God 
and divine things was to be continued, and become more 
intense than ever, it could no longer be in the rough and undis- 



344 THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF 

guised form of heathenisli antagonism to the claims of Jehorali 
and tlie higher interests of men; the circumstances' of its con- 
dition wonld manifestly oblige this power to keep np the 
appearance of a regard to these, while the reality was main- 
tained of a deadly and inveterate opposition. 

So far one might easily go in reading the interpretation of 
this part of Daniel's outline of the distant future. And the 
certainty of an ultimate failure of the objects aimed at by the 
worldly power in this last form of its existence ; of the down- 
fall of the power itself, and the rise, in spite of its malice and 
persecution, of the saints of the Most High to the place of^ 
power and dominion ; these also are points so clearly unfolded 
that there is no need for dwelling particularly upon thenu 
But with so much that is plain in the vision there is much also 
that is left in darkness and uncertainty, especially in regard to 
the probable period in the Church's history when this mysteri- 
ous power should arise, and the manner and degree in which 
it should seek to cultivate the human aspect of the divine 
kingdom, and thereby prove itself to be diverse from the more 
groveling worldly kingdoms that preceded it. On such points 
as these it had been premature to give any specific information 
in the time of Daniel ; and in so far as they might be prophetic- 
ally given, it is only in the Scriptures of the 'New Testament 
that we can be warranted to look for them. To these, there- 
fore, we now turn ; and though it is only the visions of the 
Apocalypse which properly resume and fill up the symbohcal 
perspective of Daniel, yet it is necessary in the first instance to 
refer to certain direct intimations of the coming evU which are 
found in the earlier portions of New Testament Scripture. 
For thus anly can we gather with certainty and precision the 
light which is furnished to the Christian Church respecting the 
last and most dangerous form of the worldly power. 

§ 2. The Antichrist as represented hy our Lord and his Apostles. 

1. Here we naturally look first to the discourses of our Lord ; 
but as these were chiefly intended to lay the foundations, as to 
doctrine and duty, of the Christian Church, and unfold the 



THE CHURCH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 345 

calling and prospects of her real members, they contain compar- 
atively little that bears on our present subject. ^N^ot unfre- 
quently they point, though in a quite general way, to the 
difficulties and dangers through which his genuine followers 
should have to pass, the violence and oppression they should 
have to meet, and the corruptions and counterfeits that should 
rise up in the midst of them and continue till the time of the 
end. Such, in particular, are the parables of the tares and the 
wheat, the laborers in the vineyard, and the importunate 
widow. Almost the only information of a more specific kind 
contained in our Lord's discourses regarding the usurpation of 
the world upon the Church, is to be found in what he says of 
the false pretenders to divine light and power, and the dan- 
gerous ascendency they were to acquire. A warning on this 
head had been thrown out in the sermon on the mount : " Be- 
ware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, 
but inwardly they are ravening wolves." Matt, vii, 15. But 
it is repeated and more pointedly pressed in the discourse 
respecting the last times in Matt, xxiv ; first at verse 11, "And 
many false prophets shall arise and deceive many ;" and again 
at verse 24, " There shall arise false Christs and false prophets, 
and shall show great signs and wonders ; insomuch that if it 
were possible, they shall deceive the very elect." From the 
connection in which the words are spoken, there can be no 
doubt that they taught the disciples to look for the appearance 
of such characters among the signs of the approaching down- 
fall of the old Jewish constitution ; and from the relation 
which this bore to the time of the end, in the more extended 
sense, we are warranted to expect that the sign would repeat 
itself in the latter stages of the world's history. Both points, 
however, are so much more fully brought out by the apostles 
of our Lord in their addresses and epistles, that we pass at once 
to what proceeded from them upon the subject. 

2. There is an historical passage, which it is not unimportant 
at the outset to notice, since it serves to throw some light on 
the import of one of the terms used by our Lord. In Acts xii, 
6, the Jew, Barjesus, who was with Sergius Paulus, the pro- 
consul of Cyprus, and who there withstood the preaching of 



346 THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF 

the Gospel, and souglit to turn him from the faith, is called a 
false prophet {^evdoTTpo(priT7i<;.) And in still further explana- 
tion of his real character, he is called Elymas the magos, two 
words indeed of the same import, only the one Aramaic 
(or Arabic) and the other Greek — Greek at least by adoption, 
thongh originally Persian. Elymas (from alim, wise,) and 
magos, both alike denote the man of wisdom in the Eastern 
sense, that is, a person addicted to the study of philosophy, 
and furnished with the skill of secret lore. It did not neces- 
sarily convey the sinister meaning of our magician or sorcerer, 
but comprehended also the better wisdom of that higher learn- 
ing which was the common pursuit of eastern sages. In 
apostolic times, however, this learning had become so much 
identified with astrology and the magic arts that too often, as 
evidently in the case of this Barjesus, the persons who pro- 
fessed it were mere soothsayers and sorcerers. Prophets of 
this low and reprobate description swarmed in the countries 
around Judea ; and notwithstanding the strong denunciations 
in the law against all magical arts and false divinations, they 
were found also in great numbers among the Jews. It was 
indeed one of the crying sins of the times — a proof of great 
hardness of heart and depravation of manners ; and there can 
be no doubt that the wonders wrought by Jesus and his dis- 
ciples would, with a certain class of minds, give a fresh im- 
pulse to the evil. Such a singular manifestation of the true 
wisdom, with its attendant power, could not fail to produce 
a general fermentation and excitement, which would give 
occasion to the display of the false ; and as our Lord foretold, 
so it happened that many false prophets arose and deceived 
many. 

The account we have in Josephus of the last crimes and 
troubles of Judea serves also to show how large a part pro- 
phetical delusions played in that fearful tragedy. But the 
spirit of error did not work altogether without the territory of 
the Church ; it was always striving to press inward. The 
apostle John even speaks of great numbers having been misled 
by it. " Beloved," he says, " believe not every spirit, but try 
the spirits, whether they are of God : because many false 



THE CHURCH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 347 

prophets are gone out into the world." (1 John iv, 1.) He 
does not precisely say that they had proceeded from within 
the Christian community; but it is clear from what follows 
that he had chiefly in view the false teaching which had begun 
to appear partly within, and partly also on the outskirts of, the 
Church. For he presently states that those spirits are not of 
God which do not confess Christ to have come in the flesh, 
and that such also are of the spirit of antichrist that was to 
come. So that according to this apostle false prophets, un- 
sound teachers, and antichrist, belonged to the same category, 
and were but different forms or operations of the same spirit. 
Indeed, as regards the Christian Church, the false prophesying 
warned against could have found no great scope for its exer- 
cise excepting in the form of teaching untrue or corrupt doc- 
trines. Hence it was the prevalence of false teachers (ipevdo- 
dLddoKaXoi) in IS^ew Testament times, corresponding to false 
prophets in the Old, of which the apostle Peter so earnestly 
admonished believers in his second epistle, (chap, ii,) and 
whose disastrous influence he so strikingly portrays. It was 
of the same, also, that St. Paul spake in his address to the 
elders of the Church of Ephesus, when he announced it as 
certain that after his departure " men should arise from among 
themselves, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples 
after them ; that grievous wolves also should enter in among 
them, not sparing the flock ;" (Acts xx, 29, 30 ;) and many parts 
of his epistles bear evidence to the same apprehensions and 
foresight of evil pressing upon his mind. The only ques- 
tion, therefore, is how far or in what respects this false proph- 
esying or corrupt teaching in .the Church coincided with 
the false Christs and the spirit of antichrist also predicted to 
arise? 

It was Jesus alone who foretold the appearance of false 
Christs. By such can only be understood false pretenders to 
the name and character of Messiah. Precisely as false proph- 
ets are those who laid claim to gifts they did not really possess, 
false Christs must denote such as would assume to be what 
Jesus of E'azareth alone was. In the strict sense, therefore, 
false Christs could only arise outside the Christian Church, 



348 THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF 

and among those who had rejected the true / and in so far as 
they did so they verified the word of Christ, "I am come m 
my Father's name, and ye received me not ; if another should 
come in his own name, him will ye receive." (John v, 43.) 
The most noted example of the kind, as well as the earliest, 
was the case of Barcochebas, (the son of a star, as he chose to 
designate himself, with reference to the prophecy of Balaam,) 
and who drew multitudes after him to destruction. False 
hopes and pretensions, however, of a similar kind have been 
ever from that period renewing themselves among the Jews, 
though circumstances have not admitted of their reaching 
such an imposing magnitude, and entailing such a common 
disaster. 

But we cannot altogether limit our Lord's declaration re- 
specting false Christs to such merely Jewish pretenders, espe- 
cially as it was a declaration made more immediately for the 
instruction and warning of his own disciples, and for them the 
danger of being seduced by persons of that description must 
have been comparatively little. We are rather to conceive 
that in this, as well as in other things noted in his discourse of 
the latter times, he wished them to regard the immediate 
future as but the beginning of a remoter end ; a beginning 
that should in substance be often repeating itself, though the 
particular form might undergo many alterations. It matters 
little, any one may perceive, whether men might or might not 
call themselves by the name of Christ, and openly set up a 
rival claim to the faith of mankind. If they should assume to 
be or to do what by exclusive right and appointment belongs 
to him, they then become, if not in name at least in reality, 
false Christs. Should any one undertake to give a revelation 
of divine things higher than that communicated by Christ, and 
different from his — ^to propound essentially other terms to the 
favor and blessing of heaven than those which proceed on the 
foundation of his perfect atonement, or to conduct the world 
to its destined consummation in light and blessedness other- 
wise than through the acknowledgment of his Name and the 
obedience of his Gospel — such a one would as really act the 
part of a false Christ as if he openly disallowed the claims of 



THE CHURCH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 349 

Jesus, and challenged to himself what rightly belongs to the 
Son of God. Hegesippns therefore (in Eusebius's Eccl. Hist., 
iv, 22,) had perfect right to include among the false Christs 
predicted by our Lord the early heresiarchs and their follow- 
ers, the Simonians, Marcionists, Yalentinians, Basilidians, etc., 
" from whom," he says, " sprung the false Christs and false 
prophets and false apostles who divided the unity of the 
Church by the introduction of corrupt doctrines against God, 
and against his Church." While in the teaching of such par- 
ties a certain deference was paid to Christ, and some elements 
of the truth of his Gospel were embraced in their views, yet in 
the general aim and tendency of these views they undoubtedly 
sought to supersede Christ and contravene the spirit of his 
Gospel. And the same substantially may be said of not a few 
persons and systems of later times, such as Mohammed, and 
the advocates in every age of nature's sufficiency to reach for 
itself a position of acceptance with God and of honor in his 
kingdom. These in reality disown the claims of Jesus, and 
set themselves up in his room as the guides and saviours of the 
world. And we cannot fail to perceive an indication of the 
varied forms such characters should assume, and the many 
different quarters whence they might be expected to arise in 
the warning of our Lord respecting them, " If they shall say 
unto you. Behold, he is in the desert, go not forth ; Behold, he 
is in the secret chambers, believe it not." 

It is Christ alone, however, as we have said, who speaks of 
false Christs. Elsewhere we read of antichrists or the antichrist, 
and have various descriptions given us of the corrupt and pesti- 
lential power which the term denotes. What, then, precisely 
does it denote ? Does it imply that the power or party indicated 
by it should, in some form or another, arrogate Christ's pecu- 
liar office and work, or does it simply express a spirit of con- 
trariety and opposition to his doctrine or kingdom ? N^othing, 
in this respect, can be gathered with certainty from the word 
itself, for the preposition (avri) which is here used in composi- 
tion with Christ, alike expresses formal opposition to an object, 
and the supplanting of it by taking its place ; and there is a 
series of compounds, in which the one idea, and a series in 



350 THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF 

wMch the other idea, is embodied.* It is only, therefore, bj 
the usage of the word, and the comparison of parallel passages, 
that we can determine in what specific sense it is to be under- 
stood, and what kind of contrariety to the truth of Christ it 
was meant to designate. The first passage in St. John's Epis- 
tle, by whom alone the word is used, stands literally thus : 
" Little children, it is the last hour (or season ;) and as ye 
heard that the antichrist cometh, even now many have become 
antichrists, {avTixpioroi ttoXXoI yeyovaoLv^ whence we know it is 
the last hour." Chap, ii, 18. Here there is no precise definition 
of what the term antichrist imports, but the assertion chiefly 
chiefly of a fact, that the idea involved in it had already passed 
into a reality, and that in a variety of persons. This, however, 
is itself of considerable moment, especially as it conveys the 
information that while the name is used in the singular, as of 
an individual, it was not intended to denote the same kind of 
strict and exclusive personality as the Christ. Even in the 
apostolic age John finds the name of anticlirist applicable to 
many individuals. And this, also, may so far help us to a 
knowledge of the idea, since, while there were numbers in that 
age who sought within the Church to corrupt the doctrine of 
Christ, and without it to disown and resist his authority, we 
have yet no reason to suppose that there were more than a 
very few who distinctly claimed the title of Christ, and pre- 
sumed to place themselves in Messiah's room. The next 
passage occurs very shortly after the one just noticed, and may 
be regarded as supplementary to it ; it is in the 22d verse. 
The apostle had stated that no lie is of the truth ; and he then 
continues, "Who is the liar (6 xpevarTjg^ the liar by pre-emin- 
ence,) but he who denieth that Jesus is the Christ ? This is 
the antichrist who denieth (or, denying) the Father and the 
Son." Here it is the denial of the truth concerning Christ, 
not the formal supplanting of Christ by an impious usurpation 
of his office, to which the name antichrist is applied. Yet it 
could not be intend6d to denote every sort of denial of the 

* For example, in avTiTkO-yla avTcdeai^, uvt'l^lo^, avTiKeifievoc, the relation of 
formal opposition; and in avOvKarog, avTijiaoLKtv^, avTi?.vTpov, that of taking the 
place of, substitution. 



THE CHURCH AKD KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 351 

truth, for this would have been to identify antichristianism 
with heathenism, and Judaism, and unbelief generally, which 
was certainly not the meaning of the apostle. The denial of 
the truth by the antichrist was made in a peculiar manner — 
not as from a directly hostile and antagonistic position, but 
under the cover of a Christian name, and with more or less of 
a friendly aspect. While it was denied that Jesus was the 
Christ, in the proper sense of the term, Jesus was by no means 
reckoned an impostor ; his name was still assumed, and his 
place held to be one of distinguished honor. That this was 
the case is evident, not only from the distinctive name applied 
to the form of evil in question, but also from what is said (in 
verses 18, 19) of the origination of the antichrists. " Many," 
says the apostle, " have become antichrists ;" they were not so 
originally, but by a downward progress had ended in becom- 
ing such. And still further, " They went out from ns, but 
were not of us ;" that is, they had belonged to the Christian 
community, but showed by the course of defection they now 
pursued, that they had not formed a part of its living member- 
ship, nor had really imbibed the spirit of the Gospel. When, 
therefore, the apostle says in the verse already quoted, that 
those whom he designated antichrists denied Jesus to be the 
Christ; and when, in another verse (chap, iv, 3) he says, 
" Every spirit that confesseth not Jesus Christ come {eXt^XvOoto) 
in the" flesh, is not of God ; and this is that spirit of antichrist 
whereof ye have heard that it should come, (literally, cometh,) 
and now already is it in the world ;" and still again, when he 
says in his Second Epistle, verse 7, " For many deceivers have 
entered into the world, who confess not Jesus Christ coming 
in flesh ; {epx^iisvov h aapKl ;) this is the deceiver and the anti- 
christ." In all these passages it can only be of a virtual denial 
of the truth that the apostle speaks. He plainly means such a 
depravation of the truth, or abstraction of its essential elements, 
as turned it into a lie. And when further he represents the 
falsehood as circling around the person of Jesus, and disowning 
him as having come in the flesh, we can scarcely entertain a 
doubt that he refers to certain forma of the great gnostic 
lieresy — to such as held, indeed, by the name of Jesus, but 



352 THE PEOPHETICAL FUTUEE OF 

conceived of him as only some kind of shadowy emanation of 
the Divine virtue, not a personal incarnation of the Eternal 
AYord. Only by taking up a position and announcing a doc- 
trine of this sort could the persons referred to have proved 
peculiarly dangerous to the Church — so dangerous as to deserve 
being called, collectively and emphatically, the Deceiver — the 
embodiment, in a manner, of the old serpent. In an avowed 
resistance to the claims of Jesus, or a total apostasy from the 
faith of his Gospel, there should necessarily have been little 
room for the arts of deception, and no very pressing danger to 
the true members of the Church. 

We arrive, then, at the conclusion, that in St. John's use of 
the term antichrist^ there is an unmistakable reference to the 
early heretics, as forming at least one exemplification of its 
idea. Such, also, was the impression derived from the apostle's 
statements generally by the fathers ; they understood him to 
speak of the heretics of the time under the antichrists who had 
already appeared. For example, Cyprian, when writing of 
heretics, Ep. Ixxiii, 13, and referring to 1 John iv, 3, asks, 
" How can they do spiritual and divine things who were eue- 
mies of God, and whose breast the spirit of antichrist has pos- 
sessed ?" On the same passage CEcumenius says, " He declares 
antichrist to be already in the world, not corporeally, but by 
means of those who prepare the way for his coming ; of which 
sort are false apostles, false prophets, and heretics. So John 
Damasc, 1. iv, orth. fid. 27, "Every one who does not confess 
the Son of God, and that God has come in the flesh, and 
is perfect God, and was made perfect man, still remaining 
God, is antichrist." And Augustine, in the third Tractatus on 
1 John, in answer to the question, whom did the apostle call 
antichrists ? though he extends the term to comprehend every 
one who is contrary to Christ and is not a true member of his 
body, yet he places in the first rank, as most directly meant, 
" all heretics and schismatics." It is plain, indeed, that the 
existing antichrists of John, the abettors and exponents of the 
ipevdog, or lie, under a Christian profession, the deniers of what 
is emphatically the truth, belonged to the very same class with 
the grievous wolves and false brethren of Paul, of whom he so 



THE CHUECH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 353 

solemnly forewarned tlie Ephesian elders, and of whom also 
he wrote in his Epistles to Timothy, (1 Ep. iv, 1 ; 2 Ep. iii, 1,) 
as persons who should depart from the faith, teach many doc- 
trines, and bring in npon the Church perilous times. John, 
writing at a later period, and referring to what then existed, 
calls attention to the development of that spirit of which Paul 
perceived the germ, and described the future growth. The 
one announced the evil as coming, the other declared it had 
already come ; reminding believers also of their having previ- 
ously heard (with reference, doubtless, to the prophetic utter- 
ances of Paul) that it was to come. So that the antichrists of 
John are found to coincide with one aspect of our Lord's false 
Christs / they were those who, without renouncing the name 
of Christians, or without any open disparagement of Jesus, for- 
sook the simplicity of the faith in him, and turned his truth 
into a lie. In so far, they might be said to supplant him, as 
to follow them was to desert Christ ; yet, from the circumstances 
• of the case, there could be no direct antagonism to Jesus, or 
distinct unfurling of the banner of revolt.* 

Assuming this, however, the question still remains whether 
we are to regard the idea of the antichrist as exhausted in 
those heretical corrupters of the Gospel in the apostolic age, 
and their successors in future times, or should rather view 
them as the types and forerunners of some huge system of 
God-opposing error, or of some grand personification of impiety 
and wickedness to be exhibited before the appearing of Christ ? 
It was thought from comparatively early times that the men- 
tion so emphatically of the antichrist bespoke something of a 
more concentrated and personally antagonistic character than 
the many antichrists which were spoken of as being already in 

* This seems so clearly implied in the apostle's statements, tliat we cannot but 
feel surprised how Archbishop Trench, in his " New Testament Synonyms," p. 120. 
should regard those statements as implying that resistance to, and defiance of, 
Christ, is the essential mark of antichrist. Defiance of Christ necessarily involves 
avowed and palpable opposition, which is the part, not of deceivers and of teach- 
ers who had corrupted the truth by a lie of their own, but of open enemies and 
unbelievers. "We agree with him, however, that, as used in John's writings, the 
term antichrist does not imply an assumption of Christ's title and offices — not, at 
least, excepting in the modified sense already stated, of propounding what was 
virtually subversive of Christ's authority and work. 

23 



354 THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF 

the world. The fathers generally were of opinion that those 
were but preliminary exemplifications of some far greater em- 
bodiment of the antichristian spirit, and commonly thought of 
a monarch (like Antiochus) of heaven-daring impiety, and nn- 
scrupnlous disregard of everything sacred and divine, who, 
after pursuing a course of appalling wickedness and violence, 
should be destroyed by the personal manifestation of Christ in 
glory. The fathers, however, were in an unfavorable position 
for taking a comprehensive view of this as well as of other 
points belonging to unfulfilled prophecy.* And this view, 
besides, was founded not simply nor even chiefly upon the 
passages above referred to in the epistles of John, but (along 
with what is written in the Apocalypse) on the words of St. 
Paul in 2 Thess. ii, 3-10. Amid many crude speculations and 
conflicting views upon this passage, none of them doubted, as 
Augustine states, (De Civ. Dei, xx, 19,) that it referred to an- 
tichrist, who was understood to be indicated by " the man of 
sin," and "the son of perdition." And beyond all question 
the evil portrayed here is essentially of the same character as 
that spoken of in the passages already considered, only with 
the characteristic traits more darkly drawn, and the whole 
mystery of iniquity more fully exhibited. As in the other 
passages, the antichristian spirit was identified with a depart- 
ing from the faith and a corrupting of the truth of the Gospel, 
so here the coming evil is designated emphatically the, apostasy 
{fi dTToaraaia, verse 3,) by which we can only think of a notable 
falling away X from the faith and purity of the Gospel, so that 
the evil was to have both its root and its development in con- 
nection with the Church's degeneracy. ]^or was the com- 



* "Warburton, iu a note to one of his Discourses, Works, voL x, 192, has very 
well distinguished in this respect between history and prophecy. " In a history 
of things past, and recorded in ihe learned languages, the languages of the times, 
the best scholar and the most sagacious critic without doubt bids fairest for the 
best interpreter, and the earlier he is to the subject the better chance he has of 
being in the right. But in a prophecy of things to come, common sense assures 
us, that he is most likely to interpret best who lives latest, and comes nearest to 
the time of the completion. For he who sees one part already fulfilled will cer- 
tainly be best able to judge of the whole, and best understand to what object it 
capitally relates." 



J 



THE CHUECH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 355 

mencement of the evil in this case, any more than in the 
other, to be far distant. Even at the comparatively early 
period when the apostle wrote it had begun to work, and in 
his ordinary ministrations he had forewarned the disciples 
concerning it, (verses 5, 7,) plainly implying that it was to 
have its rise in a spiritual and growing defection within the 
Christian Church. Then, as the term antichrist evidently 
denoted some kind of antithesis in doctrine and practice to 
Christ, a certain use of Christ's name, with a spirit and design 
entirely opposed to Christ's cause ; so in the passage before us 
the power personified and described is designated the opposer, 
(6 dvTLKelfievog, verse 4,) one who sets himself against God and 
arrogates the highest prerogatives and honors. Yet with such 
impious self-deification in fact there was to be nothing like 
an open defiance and contempt of all religious propriety in 
form / for this same power is represented as developing itself 
by " a mystery of iniquity," such a complex and subtle opera- 
tion of the worst principles and designs as might be carried 
on under the fairest and most hypocritical pretences, and by 
" signs and lying wonders, and all deceivableness of .unright- 
eousness," beguiling those who should fall under its infiuence 
to become the victims of a " strong delusion," and to " believe 
a lie," narnely, to believe that which should have to their 
view the semhlance of the truth, but in reality should be its 
opposite. JSTot only so, but the temple of God is represented 
as the theater of this impious, artful, and wicked ascendency, 
(verse 4 ;) and in respect to the Christian Church, the apostle 
Paul knows of no temple but that Church itself, nor can any 
other be understood here, as even Augustine did not fail to 
perceive.* It is the only kind of temple usurpation in Chris- 

* He states, indeed, as a possible alternative, the ruins of the old temple at Jeru- 
salem, but evidently leans to the idea of the Churcli being intended, and adds, 
♦'Unde nonnuUi, non ipsum principem, sod universum quodammodo corpus ejus, it 
est, ad eum pertinentem hominum multitudinem, simul cum ipso suo priucipe hoc 
loco intelligi antichristum volunt: rectiusque putant etiam La tine dici, sicut in 
Graico est, non, in templo Dei^ sed in iemplum Dei sedeat, tanquam ipse sit tern- 
plum Dei, quod est Ecclesia," (De Civ. Dei, xx, 19,) understanding by the temple 
the Church, and by the power usurping it the corrupt body that was to compose 
80 large a part of the Church. 



356 THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF 

tian times which can be conceived of as effecting the expecta- 
tions and interests of the Church generally, and that alone 
also which might justly be represented as a grand consumma- 
tion of the workings of iniquity within the Christian com- 
munity. So that, as a whole, the description of the apostle 
presents to our view some sort of mysterious and astounding 
combination of good and evil, formally differing from either 
heathenism or infidelity — a gathering up and assorting together 
of certain elements in Christianity for the purpose of accom- 
plishing, by the most subtle devices and cunning stratagems, 
the overthrow and subversion of Christian truth and life. It 
is therefore but the full growth and final development of St. 
John's idea of the antichrist. 

Of the descriptions generally of the coming evil in "New 
Testament Scripture, and especially of this fuller description 
in the epistle to the Thessalonians, nothing (it appears to us) 
can be more certain on exegetical grounds than that they can- 
not be made to harmonize with the Romish opinion, which 
Hengstenberg and others in the Protestant Church have been 
seeking to revive — the opinion that would find the evil realized 
in the power and influence exerted in early times by Rome in 
its heathen state against the cause and Church of Christ. In 
such an application of what is written we miss all the more 
distinctive features of the delineation. If it might be said of 
the heathen power in those times that it did attempt to 
press into the Church or temple of Grod and usurp religious 
homage there, the attempt, as is well known, did not succeed ; 
nor did it even assume the appearance of an actual sitting, or 
enthroning one's self there, (as the words import,) for the pui*- 
pose of displacing the true God and Saviour from their proper 
supremacy. In the operations of that power also we perceive 
nothing that could fitly be designated " a mystery of iniquity " 
— the iniquity being that rather of palpable opposition and 
overbearing violence — in its aim transparent to every one who 
knew the Gospel of the grace of God, and involving, if yielded 
to, the conscious renunciation of Christ. As to the signs, and 
lying wonders, and deceivableness of unrighteousness, and 
strong delusions which the apostle mentions among the means 



I 



THE CHURCH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 357 

and characterttstic indications of the dreaded power, there is 
scarcely even the shadow of them to be found in the contro- 
versy which ancient heathenism waged with Christianity. 
On every account, therefore, this view is to be rejected, failing, 
as it does, to establish the necessary correspondence between 
the leading features of the description and the supposed real- 
ization in providence. 

Another view, however, has of late been rising into notice, 
which, if well founded, would also save the Romish apostasy 
from any proper share in the predicted evil, and which, we 
cannot but fear, if not originated, has at least been somewhat 
encouraged and fostered by that softened light which the 
mediaeval and antiquarian tendencies of the present age have 
served to throw around Romanism. The view we refer to 
would make the full and proper development of the antichrist 
an essentially different thing from any such depravation of the 
truth, as is to be found in .the papacy, a greatly more blas- 
phemous usurpation, and one that can only be reached by a 
pantheistic deification of human nature. So Olshausen, who 
says on the passage in Thessalonians, " The self-deification of 
the Roman emperors appears as modesty by the side of that of 
antichrist, for the Caesars did not elevate themselves ahove the 
other gods, they only wanted to have a place heside them as 
representatives of the genius of the Roman people. Anti- 
christ, on the contrary, wants to be the only true God, who 
suffers none beside him ; what Christ demands for himself in 
truth, he, in the excess of his presumption, claims for himself 
in falsehood." Then as to the way in which he should do this 
it is said, " Antichrist will not, as Chrysostom correctly 
remarks, promote idolatry, but seduce men from the true 
God, as also from all idols, and set himself up as the only 
object of adoration. This remarkable idea that sin in anti- 
christ issues in a downright self-deification, discloses to us the 
inmost nature of evil which consists in selfishness. In anti- 
christ, all love, all capability of sacrifice and self-denial, shows 
itself entirely submerged in the making of the I all in all, 
which then also insists on being acknowledged by all men as 
the center of all power, wisdom, and glory." The proper anti- 



358 THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF 

christ, therefore, according to Olshausen, must be a person, 
one who shall be himself the mystery of iniquity, as Christ is 
the mystery of godliness, a kind of embodiment or incarnation 
of Satan. He can regard all the past manifestations and 
workings of evil only as serving to indicate what it may pos- 
sibly be, but by no means realizing the idea, and he conceives 
it may one day start forth in the person of one who shall com- 
bine in his character the elements of infidelity and superstition 
which are so visibly striving for the mastery over mankind. 
Some individual may be cast up by the fermentation that is 
going forward who shall concentrate around himself all the 
Satanic tendencies in their greatest power and energy, and 
come forth at last in impious rivalry of Christ as the incarnate 
son of the devil. Dr. Trench appears substantially to adopt 
this view, though he expresses himself more briefly and also 
more vaguely on the subject. With him the antichrist is " one 
who shall not pay so much homage to God's word as to assert 
the fulfillment in himself, for he shall deny that word alto- 
gether, hating even erroneous worship, because it is worship 
at all ; hating much more the Church's worship in spirit and 
in truth ; who on the destruction of every religion, every 
acknowledgment that man is submitted to higher powers than 
his own, shall seek to establish his throne ; and for God's great 
truth ' God is man,' to substitute his own lie, ' man is God.' " 
(Synonyms, p. 120.) 

It is certainly not to be denied that there are tendencies in 
operation at the present time fitted, in some degree, to suggest 
the thought of such a possible incarnation of the ungodly and 
atheistic principle, though nothing has yet occurred which can 
be said to have brought it within the bounds of the probable. 
But at all events it is an aspect of the matter derived greatly 
more from the apprehended results of those tendencies them- 
selves than from a simple and unbiased interpretation of the 
passages of Scripture under consideration. Such an antichrist 
as that now depicted, the impersonation of unblushing wicked- 
ness and atheism has everything against it which has been 
already urged against the view that would identify the de- 
scription with the enmity and persecutions of heathen Rome. 



THE CHUECH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 359 

Instead of seating itself in the temple of tlie Cliristian Chiircli 
as its own, and arrogating there the supreme place, that anti- 
christian power could only rise on the ruins of the temple. 
And whatever audacity or foolhardiness there might be in the 
assumptions and proceedings of such a power, one cannot, by 
any stretch of imagination, conceive how, with such flagrant 
impiety in its front, it could present to God's people the ap- 
pearance of a mystery of iniquity, and be accompanied with 
signs and wonders and deceitful workings, destined to prevail 
over all who had not received the truth in the love of it. 
Conscience and the Bible must cease to be what they now are, 
cease at least to possess the mutual force and respondency they 
have been wont to exercise, ere so godless a power could rise 
to the ascendant in Christendom. It may even be said the 
religious susceptibilities of men in the false direction as well 
as the true would need to have sustained a paralysis alike un- 
precedented and incredible. And besides, the historical con- 
nection would be broken which the passages bearing on the 
antichristian apostasy plainly establish between the present 
and the future. In what already was, the apostles descried 
the germ, the incipient workings of what was hereafter more 
fully to develop itself ; while the antichrist now suggested to 
our apprehensions, if it should ever attain to a substantive 
existence, would stand in no proper affinity to the false doe- 
trine and corruptions of the apostolic age. It would be a 
moral phenomenon altogether novel. 

The tendency, we believe, on the part of evangelical writers 
to fall into such mistaken views of the antichrist has arisen in 
good measure from isolating too much some parts of the 
apostle's description, (particularly 2 Thess. ii, 3, 4,) and over- 
looking as well the agreements as the necessary differences 
between the ultimate and the typical antichrist. The part of 
the description more immediately referred to consists almost 
entirely of Daniel's words and imagery, and when the two are 
viewed in their proper relations considerable light is thrown on 
the import of the later revelation. In the first place it holds 
alike of both that the opposing and blaspheming power was to 
have its root and the occasion of its manifestation within the 



360 THE PROPHETICAL FUTUKE OF 

professing CliurcL. Even in tlie case of Antioclius, though he 
stood outside, jet the party whom he represented, and through 
whom alone he obtained the power and the opportunity to 
practice his enormities, had their place within ; he merely gave 
a head to the evil that had been working in Israel, and 
brought it forth into fall efflorescence. So also in the apos- 
tle's description all is connected with the rise and progress of 
iniquity in the Church ; viewed complexly it is " the apostasy " 
beginning in men's failure to receive the truth in love, and 
having pleasure in unrighteousness, so that the revelation of 
what is called emphatically "the wicked," or "the man of 
sin," can be nothing but the growth of the internal corruption 
to its proper magnitude, assmning as it were its head and 
crown. The distinctive characteristics therefore must have 
been the same throughout. Then, in regard to the more of- 
fensive part of these characteristics, the one power also was 
the prototype of the other, and in neither case is absolute 
atheism or utter irreligiousness meant to be ascribed to it. It 
was said of Antiochus, the typical antichrist, that he should 
do according to his will, should exalt himself, should magnify 
himself above every god, and speak marvelous things against 
the God of gods ; though we know that he did all as a pro- 
fessed and zealous religionist. His course is described, after 
the common manner of prophecy, not by its/brmaZ, but by its 
Teal character, so that his fiery zeal for Jupiter is resolved into 
its true source, his own arbitrary self-will and frenzied devo- 
tion to the false religion and corrupt manners of Greece, which 
only sought for itself a cover in an affected regard for the 
honor of a particular god. He really magnified himself above 
every god, because in the service of heathenism he did what 
was contrary to the genius of heathenism itself, as well as out- 
rageously dishonoring to the God of heaven. And it is un- 
doubtedly in the same way that St. Paul's application of those 
terms to the ]^ew Testament antichrist ought to be under- 
stood ; they should be held descriptive of its real rather than 
its formal character. The self-exaltation of this power above 
all that is called God or worshiped, so far from excluding a 
show of religion, might rather be expected to involve this as 



THE CHUKCH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 361 

its necessary condition ; the direct and naked exhibition of 
such a spirit being, from the nature of things, fitted to pro- 
voke indignation and insure defeat. The more lofty and 
towering its pretensions the more indispensable should it find 
a religious pretext to carry them out. And hence the scene 
of its operations is expressly laid in the temple of God as 
something essentially significant of their nature : "So that as 
God he sits," not simply, " and he does sit," as a distinct part 
of his proceedings, or an aggravation of their impious charac- 
ter, but of necessity he takes this course in order to make good 
his self-exalting projects : " So that as God he sits in the tem- 
ple of God, showing himself that he is God." In short, the 
Church was the requisite sjphere for such a 'power developing 
itself ; in this alone could it reach the height of presumption 
and God-dishonoring worldliness it aspires after, and conse- 
quently the opposition to God and assumption of divine pre- 
rogatives must be virtual only, and not formal or professed ; 
there must needs be the show of religion as well as the setting 
up of a standard, and the encouragement of practices that are 
opposed to the spirit of the Bible.* Then, thirdly, consider- 
ing the change which Christianity has introduced, and the 
differences subsisting between Old and IsTew Testament times, 
while substantially the same acts are ascribed to the typical 
and the antitypical antichrist, the manner of their accomplish- 
ment must be understood to have not only allowed but 
required some diversity. This is common ' to relations gen- 
erally between Old and Kew Testament times. In th« one 
both the religion and the history partook much of the local, 
the outward, and the individual, while in the other it is the 
inward, the general, the diffusive which chiefly predominate ; 
and hence things which might, while the old relations stood, 
have been transacted in a particular spot or embodied in a 
single individual, must now, though occupying relatively the 
same place, be quite otherwise carried into execution. Since 
the Christian Church, which is confined to no land or region, 
has taken the place of the ancient temple, and is called 
by its name, no individual could do in it precisely what was 

* See Appendix L. 



362 THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF 

done by Antiochus at Jerusalem. The corresponding power, 
which is described as that of an individual, because it was to 
be informed and animated by one spirit, could admit of being 
so described only by being viewed collectively ; in reality it 
could no more than the temple it was to usurp, and in great 
part also occupy, be simply local and personal. And indeed 
even in former times Antiochus was rather the exponent and 
representative of an evil that had spread far and wide in Israel 
than an independent power ; but much more must this be the 
case with what should correspond to it in Christian times. So 
that, as antichrist was shown even in the apostolic age to be a 
collective designation, such terms as " the wicked," " the man 
of sin," " the son of perdition," must have been intended to 
bear a like extent of meaning. They all point back to the 
vision of Daniel, in which the divine kingdom had its repre- 
sentation in one like a Son of man, and indicate that this 
apostate power would strive to imitate the man-like appear- 
ance of the other, would jprofess to be what it really was ; but 
so far from being, like it, the image of the spiritual and divine, 
should be rather the impersonation of the sensual and the 
devilish. It would be a son, indeed, but like Judas, a son of 
perdition ; a manly rather than a beastly form, but one gath- 
ering up and garnishing with a deceitful show the worse ele- 
ments of man's fallen condition, and so incurring the doom of 
the heaviest condemnation.* 

On the whole, then, the conclusion which forces itself upon 
our minds from a full and impartial consideration of the apos- 
tolic testimony, is that the antichristian apostacy cannot be 
identified either with the heathenism of ancient Home, or with 
any conceivable form of infidelity or atheism yet to be devel- 

* In saying this we do not reject the notion of Lange, as quoted by Auberlen, 
p. 301, of Auberlen himself, and many others, that "as every phase of mind has 
its more prominent representatives and directors, so the different aspects of anti- 
christianism appear blooming in individual antichrists;" but we are of opinion 
that it is pressing an Old Testament analogy too far, and overlooking the diversity 
of circumstances introduced by the Gospel, when it is announced as at once a 
historical and a scriptural result that "these individual antichrists shall one day 
reach their close in an evil genius far outstripping all predecessors." "We see no 
proper ground for such an expectation. 



THE CHURCH AND KINGDOM OF CHEIST. 863 

oped. The conditions of the prophetical enigma are not satis- 
fied by either of these views. So mnch for the negative side of 
the question. And in regard to the jposiUve^ if we may not 
say (as, indeed, we by no means think it can in truth be said) 
that in Romanism and the papacy the anticipated evil has 
found its only realization ; yet we cannot for a moment doubt, 
that it is there we are to look for the most complete, system- 
atic, and palpable embodiment of its grand characteristics. 
There we perceive, as nowhere else, either to the same extent, 
or with the same firm determination of purpose, a mass of 
errors and abuses " grafted on the Christian faith, in opposition 
to, and in outrage of, its genius and its commands, and taking 
a bold possession of the Christian Church." We see " the doc- 
trines of celibacy, and of a ritual abstinence from meats, against 
the whole spirit of the Grospel, set up in the Church by an 
authority claiming to have universal obedience ; a man of sin 
exalting himself in the temple of God, and openly challenging 
rights of faith and honor due to God ; advancing himself by 
signs and lying wonders, and turning his pretended miracles 
to the disproof and discredit of some of the chief doctrines or 
precepts of Christianity ; and this system of ambition and false- 
hood succeeding, established with the deluded conviction of 
men still holding the profession of Christianity." ^ All this 
meets so remarkably the conditions of St. Paul's prophecy, and 
in its history and growth also from the apostolic age so strik- 
ingly accords with the warnings given of its gradual and 
stealthy approach, that, wherever else the antichrist may exist, 
they must be strangely biased who do not discern its likeness 
in the Romish apostacy. We may the rather rest in the cer- 
tainty of this conclusion, as it is matter of historical certainty, 
that ages before the Reformation, and, indeed, all through the 
long conflict that was ever renewing itself on the part both of 
secular and spiritual opponents against Rome, the Pope was 
often denounced as the antichrist and man of sin. But it is 
one thing to find a great and palpable realization of the idea 
there, and another thing to hold that it is the only realization 
to be found in the past or the future. And if Romanists have 
* Davison's "Discourses on Prophecy," p. 448. 



364 THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF 

made void the testimony of Scripture in rejecting the one 
application, we fear Protestants have too often grievously nar- 
rowed it by excluding every other. Of this, however, we shall 
have a fitter occasion to speak when we have examined that 
remaining portion of I^ew Testament Scripture which treats of 
the same subject, and in a way peculiarly its own. We refer, 
of course, to the Apocalypse. 

§ 3. The Antichrist as represented in the Apocalypse. 

In turning to this last division of the New Testament writ- 
ings, we find no use made of the more peculiar part of the 
phraseology we have recently been considering. The terms 
" antichrist," " man of sin," " son of perdition," or " apostasy," 
are never met with, though there is no want of terms and rep- 
resentations which coincide with them in meaning. In the 
first part of the book which describes the things that were in 
connection with the seven Churches of Asia, and through them 
presents us with the Lord's idea of a true Church, we are fur- 
nished with many proofs of an already begun apostasy, and see 
a prevailing tendency toward the forms of evil, the antichris- 
tian spirit of error and corruption of which we have been dis- 
coursing. In almost every one of the Churches addressed, 
there appears an intermingling of the false with the true ; 
Satan already had something of his own in them. And in 
some the evil had assumed the precise form of a mystery of 
iniquity, or a course of deep and deadly defection, under the 
guise of lofty pretensions, and a crafty ensnaring pohcy. JS'ot 
only do we read of an Ephesus where the first love was lost, of 
a Sardis, where little more than a name to live continued to 
exist, and a Laodicea, where fieshly ease and self-confidence 
generally prevailed, but we have also a Pergamos, and a Thy- 
atira, where false prophets or teachers, designated IS^icolaitans 
and followers of Balaam, plied their arts of seduction, seeking 
with their false gnosis to draw men away from the true ; and 
the false prophetess Jezebel (whether an individual, or, as may 
rather be supposed, an influential party) through whom the 
community were being enticed to spiritual whoredom, or led to 



THE CHURCH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 365 

couple with the profession of the faith a heathenish looseness 
and carnality of spirit. In these disclosures respecting the 
existing state of things, we have presented to our view, as 
already in active operation, the antichristian spirit, the mix- 
ture of false doctrine with true, of corruption in practice with 
swelling words of profession ; of the world, in short, with the 
Church, which constitutes the distinguishing peculiarity of 
Paul's apostasy, and John's antichrist. And so essential was 
it according to all scriptural views of the condition and calling 
of the Church, for her to resist and stand free from the elements 
of corruption which were thus striving to press in upon her 
from the world, that the Lord, throughout the whole of these 
epistles, threatens with the sorest judgments such as might 
yield to the pernicious influence, and declares his purpose to 
recognize now as his real people, and hereafter reward with 
the honors of his kingdom, none but those who should overcome 
and hold fast the purity and steadfastness of their allegiance to 
him. All besides were of the wicked one, and not of Christ ; 
deceitful workers and children of perdition, not temples of the 
Spirit, and heirs of glory. 

'Now in these representations of the things which were, we 
have a key to the general object and meaning of the symbolical 
revelation given in the remainder of the book of the things 
which were to come, l^ respect to the Church at large, and its 
coming fortunes, we have there exhibited the same tendencies, 
conflicts, and results. We see the Church, by reason of her 
connection with Christ, destined to conquer and reign, but 
meanwhile greatly marred by the darkness and corruption 
which were ever making way upon her from the world. In 
consequence of this, she is by the visitation of Cod chastened 
and purged ; in her worst part judged and tormented by hav- 
ing her sin turned into her punishment ; for calamities and 
woes are brought upon her in manifold succession from that 
world which she sinfully coveted and embraced ; until, the 
work of purification being accomplished, and a Church in holy 
beauty being prepared for the glories of the Lamb, the full and 
proper union between her and her Divine Head is consumma- 
ted, and the mystery of God concerning his work on earth fin- 



366 THE PEOPHETICAL FUTURE OF 

ished amid songs of trmmph and scenes of ineffable delight. 
In the evolution of this singular and complicated symbolical 
history the anticipated degeneracy of the Church, and the 
formation in her of a vast antichristian power of the kind 
already described, is continually implied, and sometimes more, 
sometimes less explicitly alluded to ; but there are two portions 
more particularly in which it is distinctly and formally 
represented. 

The first of these is introduced at chapter xi, in connection 
with the sixth trumpet, and is presented under the image that 
had been previously used by the Apostle Paul, (2 Thess. ii, 4,) 
that of the temple of God. " There was given me," it is said, 
" a reed like unto a rod : and the angel stood, saying. Rise, and 
measure the temple of God, and the altar, and them that wor- 
ship therein. But the court which is without the temple leave 
out and measure it not ; for it is given unto the Gentiles : and 
the holy city shall they tread under foot forty and two months." 
We can regard this remarkable passage in no other light than. 
as an expansion of St. Paul's description, indicating more par- 
ticularly how the antichristian power was to sit in the temple 
of God, and the relation in which it should stand to the true 
Church. Romish writers, and latterly, also, some Protestants, 
have labored hard to impose the same interpretation upon this 
as upon the passage in the Thessaloijians, and to understand 
by the two parties described, the Christian Church on the one 
side, and on the other the opposing and persecuting power of 
heathen Pome. But the attempt must ever appear fruitless to 
those who understand the symbolical language of Scripture, 
and would give it a consistent and impartial application. The 
words manifestly delineate, not merely two different and oppos- 
ing parties, but two classes of worshipers, parties alike pro- 
fessing to belong to the same visible temple of God, though 
one of them alone really and properly abidiag in it. This lat- 
ter class are those who are symbolized by what was to be 
measured, as that which had its appointment of God, and was 
under his careful guardianship ; " the temple of God, and the 
altar, and them that worship therein." They are, in a word, 
God's living temple ; his " spiritual house," or " holy priest- 



THE CHURCH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 367 

hood," whose duty and calling it is to " offer up spiritual sacri- 
fices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ." The other portion, 
though also, in a sense, belonging to the same sacred building, 
only lying outside the strictly sacred territory, was to be left 
unmeasured, as wanting the right connection with God and a 
real interest in his faithful keeping. It is called " the court 
without the temple," and is represented as " being given to the 
Gentiles," with reference to the uncircumcised condition of 
those who of old worshiped in such a court, and, without 
doubt, to indicate the uncircumcised, or really unsanctified 
state, of those whom it imaged, however holy they might ex- 
ternally seem. That they were to have, more or less, the sem- 
hlance of this, their position in the temple-court clearly denotes ; 
but that it was to be only a semblance, that it was to want the 
reality of divine grace and life, the merely external, essentially 
heathenish or worldly nature of the position, not less clearly 
demonstrates. The characters indicated, therefore, were of 
necessity to form a Church party, but the false as contradis- 
tinguished from the true ; the world in the Church ; and so, 
coinciding in character with the apostasy of Paul and the 
spirit of antichrist in the epistles of John. And when it is 
said of this corrupt party that they should " tread the holy city 
under foot forty and two months," we are plainly informed 
that they were, notwithstanding the false position they occu- 
pied, to have the ascendancy in the professing Church of God ; 
nay, and should trample on and oppress those who alone right- 
fully belonged to it. The " holy city " is but another name for 
the Church, the true members of which are said to have their 
names written among the living in Jerusalem ; and to tread 
down the city is, in other words, to rule with proud domination 
over the sincere people of God, and treat them with persecuting 
violence. The period during which this unnatural state of 
things was to last is described by the mystical term of " forty 
and two months," which, whether it may be capable or not of 
being definitely determined, must have been meant to compre- 
hend a period of some continuance. For in another place it 
denotes the time during which the Church was to be in the 
wilderness, (chapter xii, 6,) that is, in a tried, humbled, and 



368 THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF 

afflicted condition; a state into wliich slie hegan to enter 
shortly after the Lord's ascension to the heavenly places, and 
out of which she is only to come to possess with him the inher- 
itance. Here, also, it embraces the whole time between the 
rise of the corrupt and apostate party in the Church, and their 
complete overthrow, which takes place at the sounding of the 
seventh trumpet, when the kingdoms of this world are declared 
to have become the kingdom of our Lord and his Christ. 
(Yerse 15.) During this time the real Church is represented 
as occupying chiefly a witnessing condition. Precluded from 
outwardly ruling in the things of God, she can only deliver a 
testimony, and is, therefore, symbolized by two witnesses, the 
legal number for such a purpose ; implying that God would 
still continue a succession of faithful persons, adequate, though 
but barely adequate, it may be, to such a purpose. And as 
the testimony they should utter was that of God's own word, 
it could not be without effect ; the protest it delivered against 
reigning error and corruption, and in behalf of the truth of 
Christ, must make itself heard like the testimony of old on the 
tables of the covenant, alike in the ear of Heaven and in the 
consciences of men. It is on this word which is the expression 
of God's mind and will, that all blessing and cursing is found 
to turn ; by it the windows of heaven are shut or opened, and 
life and death (spiritually) are administered among men. 
(Yerses 5, 6.) IN'o wonder, therefore, that the ungodly domin- 
ant party who are said to have their dwelling upon the earth, 
(verse 10,) because they belonged entirely to the earthly sphere, 
should seek to stop the mouths of those who had such a testi- 
mony to deliver, and even proceed to the last extremities 
against them by utterly silencing them, or as it is called, put- 
ting them to death, killing them as witnesses. To make it 
more apparent how and by whom this should be effected, it is 
said to take place " in the great city, which spiritually is called 
Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified ;" that is, 
it was to be done by an apostate Church that had formally 
joined hands with the world, as when the Jewish Church com- 
bined with Pilate and Herod to destroy Jesus, and had become 
like the most reprobate portions of the world itself. But still 



THE CHURCH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 369 

it does not succeed in its object ; tlie tormenting testimony 
cannot so be quenched ; it revives again all the louder and 
more impressive in its utterances for the violence that has been 
done to it ; the old saying is anew verified, that the blood of 
the martyrs is the seed of the Church ; and thus, by striving 
unto blood and holding fast the word of her testimony, the 
cause represented by her faithful children grows and prospers 
by means of suffering, and after it they rise, like their divine 
Head, to the higher region of power and influence, until at 
length the system of anti christian error they opposed falls 
under the doom of heaven, and the world in the Church comes 
to be exchanged for the Church in the world. 

Such briefly, and without reference to explicit times or 
periods, (of which we may afterward speak,) is the tenor and 
import of this first symbolical representation in the Apocalypse 
of an apostatizing and corrupt, as contradistinguished from 
the true Church. So closely does it join itself to earlier rev- 
elations upon the subject, especially to the passage in the 
second epistle to the Thessalonians, that it seems much like 
the turning of what had been there written into a parable, or 
presenting it in the form of a symbolical narrative — only with 
less regard than in St. Paul's description to the means by 
which the antichristian usurpation was to be effected, more to 
the manner in which it should be met and overcome by the 
remnant of a faithful Church. And it should be well noted in 
respect to this latter point, which is here for the first time dis- 
tinctly exhibited, that no mention is made of any instrument- 
ality on the part of the Church, or in behalf of the cause of 
righteousness, but the unswerving and devoted use of the test- 
imony of God's word. The operation and effects of this are 
described (in accordance with the general character of the 
vision) under material imagery, such as the power of the wit- 
nesses in opening and shutting up heaven, fire going out of 
their mouth, and latterly the occurrence of an earthquake, 
shaking to its foundations the corrupt city, and partly destroy- 
ing partly leading to the conversion of its inhabitants. But 
all these are manifestly images, not of agencies employed, but 

rather of effects produced, by the one grand agency of a living 

24 



370 THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF 

Churcli, plying the mighty weapon of God's testimony. As 
the result of her doing this, undoubtedly, many external and 
even political changes must ensue, such as cannot but carry 
the aspect of woes and judgments to the apostate and worldly 
power. But the primary and fundamental result, that also 
which carries all else in its train, is the success of the testimony 
itself; it is this alone which can secure a moral victory, and, 
in such a case, nothing but a moral victory can be either ade- 
quate or permanent ; it, and nothing else, lays the ax to the 
root of the tree, and cuts it down forever. Apart from this, 
outward calamities or temporal judgments at most effect but 
the removal of a few branches. 

The other formal representation given of this subject in the 
Apocalypse is founded upon a different image ; upon the 
Church's relation to Christ as his bi'ide or spouse. It was 
especially for the purpose (as noticed in last section) of obtain- 
ing a symbolical foundation for unfolding the false and unfaith- 
ful part which so large a portion of the professing Church was 
to play in the future, that the symbolical representations of St. 
John, while coinciding so much with those of Daniel, split 
here into the two parts of humanity, what in the former case 
had been preserved in its unity. With John as well as with 
Daniel, the divine kingdom as a whole, in its ideal grandeur 
and perfection, has its representation in one who had the ap- 
pearance of a Son of man, and that irradiated with a brightness 
and glory altogether divine. But since this representation 
had been embodied, before the writing of the Apocalypse, in a 
living personality, and the idea involved in it was there real- 
ized in all its completeness, it became necessary, when tracing 
out the perspective of the Church's history amid the imperfec- 
tions of a present life, and the defections of an unfaithful and 
apostate spirit, to divide between the head and the members. 
This was done by choosing the female side of humanity for 
the symbol of the Church, viewed in connection with the bonds, 
obligations, and prospects of the marriage vow. The real 
Church, therefore, is the woman clothed w^ith the sun — the 
chaste virgin without spot or wrinkle, pure and glorious, there- 
fore fit to be the Lamb's wife, and to share with him in the 



THE CHUKCH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 371 

blessings and honors of his kingdom. But there is another 
woman, a harlot, who stands related to the true Church pre- 
cisely as an unfaithful and profligate spouse to one of unshaken 
probity and worth : not, therefore, a simply unrighteous and 
wicked party, but such a party with a Christian profession ; a 
Church degenerate, faithless, sunk in the mire of worldliness 
and sin. Such, precisely, is the sense in which this symbol is 
employed in Old Testament prophecy ; and in designating the 
false and corrupt Church a harlot, or mother of abominations, 
St. John only followed a precedent that had been given in a 
multitude of prophetical passages. (Isa. Ivii, 3-5 ; Jer. ii, iii ; 
Ezek. xvi, xxiii ; Hos. i, ii, etc.) There the terms adulteress, 
harlot, or whore, with scarcely an exception, denote the back- 
slidden and apostate community of Israel. Our Lord also 
makes a similar use of the image. (Matt, xii, 39, xvi, 4 ; Mark 
viii, 38.) And in the earlier part of the Apocalypse, the incip- 
ient evil in this respect, the declension that had begun in cer- 
tain Churches by falling into the corrupt ways and practices 
of the world, is characterized as whoredom and the committing 
of fornication, (chap, ii, 14, 20, 22 ;) as, on the other hand, the 
true and faithful Church is afterwards represented as a com- 
pany, who retained their virgin purity (chap, xiv, 4,) while 
immediately in contrast to them, the faithless portion is brought 
into view as the great whore. (Yerse 8.) So that both the 
general usage in prophecy, and the usage in particular 
portions of this book, can leave no reasonable ground to 
doubt as to the sense meant to be conveyed by the figurative 
expression.* 

* It is marvelous, and can only be accounted for by the perverting bias of a false 
hypothesis, how, in the face of this whole stream of prophetical usage, Hengsten- 
berg (following the Catholic, and a few continental Protestant writers) should un- 
derstand by the whore merely the worldly Romish state, and by her fornication 
the arts with which she drew the nations of the earth under her sway. For any 
appearance of support to this view he can only refer to the two passages, Isa. 
xxiii, 15-18; Nah. iii, 4, where the figure is used similarly of Tyre and Nineveh. 
But two such isolated passages can be of no force in determining the usage in a 
book, which, as to its language, is an echo of that of prophecy in general. But 
were it otherwise doubtful, the connection in this book itself, between the whore 
and the woman, renders it certain that the former can only denote a corruption of 
what is denoted by the latter. 



372 THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF 

This view is also confirmed bj the descriptive signature em- 
blazoned on the forehead of this mystical woman : " Upon her 
forehead was a name written, Mystery, Babylon the great, the 
mother of harlots and abominations of the earth." The desig- 
nation of Babylon points to the essentially heathen, ungodly 
character of the power represented, and its hostile relation to 
the true Church of God ; with the further indication (which is 
more expressly brought out in verse 18) that it was to have a 
seat and concentration of influence in a modern city, (that, 
namely, of Home,) similar to what the Chaldean monarchy once 
had in Babylon. If this, however, had stood alone, we should 
only have had presented to us the antichristian and worldly 
character of the power, without anything to imply that it had 
become such by a process of declension and apostasy. But a 
single word, and that the very first in the inscription, proclaims 
this ; it intimates that the really Babylonish character of the 
power was so far from being the ostensible one, that a spiritual 
discernment should be needed to perceive it. The term mys- 
tery^ in the quite uniform usage of Scripture, denotes something 
which lies beyond the ken of the merely natural apprehension, 
and is revealed only to such as have the mind and Spirit of 
God. So it is used frequently by the apostle Paul, (Rom. xvi, 
25 ; 1 Cor. ii, 7-10 ; Eph. iii, 3, 5 ; 1 Cor. xv, 51 ;) and by St. 
John himself, first at the commencement of this book, chap, i, 
20. where the explanation of the seven candlesticks and the 
seven stars is called a mystery, because disclosing in connection 
with them something greater and deeper than the bodily eye 
perceived, and again at chap, x, 7, where the work of God's 
providence toward the Church and the world is styled a mys- 
tery, plainly from its containing so much that lay above and 
beyond the reach of the natural understanding, and which 
could only be learned by special revelation from above. !Now, 
there had been no mystery in this sense had the power here 
referred to been merely a worldly kingdom, opposing and per- 
secuting the Church of God, and as such called Babylon from 
its resemblance to the old heathen power of that name ; the 
commonest understanding might have perceived the meaning 
and the propriety of the designation. But there was a mys- 



THE CHUKCH AND KINGDOM OF CHEIST. 373 

terj in the strictest sense, if the power so designated professed 
to be the very reverse of what the designation implied ; if by 
a spirit of degeneracy and unfaithfulness it had, while still 
retaining its claim to spirituality, sunk into a condition of the 
grossest earthliness and corruption. In that case there would 
be needed the wisdom that comes from above, the hidden wis- 
dom of God's spirit, to look through the external appearance, 
and discern the real state and character underneath. To call 
this power, therefore, in connection with the appellation Baby- 
lon, a mystery, w^as quite of a piece with calling Jerusalem in 
our Lord's time, and in after times the corrupt and apostate 
Church spiritually, Sodom and Egypt, (chap, xi, 8 ;) it denoted 
a character the reverse to the spiritual mind that it should 
seem to the carnal. And when along with this indication of a 
reality contrary to the appearance and profession we find 
coupled the epithet of " mother of harlots and abomina- 
tions," the evidence is complete, that a degenerate power of 
the worst description, a false, apostate, corrupt and worldly 
Church, must have been the kind of power represented in the 
image. 

Yery striking, also, and still further confirmatory of what 
has been said, is the manner in which the image is introduced, 
and the place and appearance ascribed to it. The apocalyptist 
represents himself as carried in the spirit, for the purpose of 
beholding this sight, into a wilderness. (Yerse 3.) Had it 
been the worldly dominant monarchy of Rome which was to 
be exhibited in vision, this had certainly been a strange place 
to be taken to see it ; the marts of commerce or the con- 
spicuous heights would have been the more fitting scenes. 
But it perfectly accords with the view we have given of the 
subject, and is no doubtful link of connection between tlie 
present representation and a former one. The prophet had 
left the true Church, as symbolized by the woman that was 
clothed with the sun in the wilderness, whither she had fled 
for safety, and whither, also, she was followed by the dragon 
with his flood-like hordes. We already saw, in what is said at 
chap, xii, 17, of a remnant only of her seed being said to keep 
the commandments of God and the testimony of Jesus, evi- 



374 THE PEOPHETICAL FUTUEE OF 

dence of a certain success having been won by the adversary 
in the efforts he was thus going to put forth against her. 
And now, when the prophet is again borne in the Spirit to a 
wilderness, instead of seeing the woman he had seen in such a 
place before he beholds a woman, indeed, (there is no article,) 
but one so unlike the former that the name only remained : 
one so far from being all radiant with celestial brightness and 
glory, liSe the other, that she was immersed in the foulne&s 
and degradation of earth ; sitting on a scarlet-colored beast, 
and herself arrayed in pm^ple and scarlet color, decked with 
gold and precious stones and pearls — the best, no doubt, of a 
worldly attire, but still all of the earth, earthy. While the 
woman is so different, the beast is the same as before — ^the 
same seven-headed, ten-horned monster, fall of the spirit of blas- 
phemy ; (verse 3, compare with chap, xiii, 1 ;) in plain terms, 
the worldly antichristian power in its last great embodiment ; 
so that a woman sitting on this must be a Church sunk in 
spirit to the world's level, yet in power rising to the ascendant 
over it, and having it for her leading ambition to direct and 
rule in the worldly sphere. But of necessity she could only 
do this by entering into the beast's hostility to the kingdom of 
God, and warring with the real members of that kingdom, 
who should hold the faith and testimony of Jesus. Hence the 
woman appeared also " drunk with the blood of the saints, and 
with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus." (Yerse 6.) This ex- 
plains why the prophet wondered at the spectacle, even with 
a great admiration. Had it been merely a heathen power, or 
one that stood altogether apart from the things of God's king- 
dom which he saw thus represented before him, there had been 
no great reason for astonishment ; the ungodliness, corruption, 
and persecuting violence exhibited were precisely what might 
have been expected. But such a transformation — a power 
spiritual in its origin, and claiming by its appearance still to 
possess a spiritual character — for such a power to have sunk so 
low and come to act so atrocious a j)art might well awake the 
most profound astonishment. It was the same thing substan- 
tially, but with far greater aggravations, which, in Old Testa- 
ment times, led the prophets to call both upon heaven and 



THE CHUKCH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 375 

earth to express amazement as at an unheard-of enormity. 
(Isa. i, 2 ; Jer. ii, 10 ; xvii, 13.) * 

The result then which mnst here be arrived at is manifest ; 
every essential feature in the symbolical delineation forces on 
lis the conclusion that it is a fallen and degenerate Church 
which is delineated — a power claiming the character, but op- 
posed to the spirit and interests of the real Church — worldly, 
temporizing, persecuting. Nor only so ; but it was to be also 
a power most extensive in its dominion and preponderating 
in its influence, for the woman appeared sitting on many 
waters, which are explained to mean "peoples, and multitudes, 
and nations, and tongues," (verse 15 ;) so that she should seem 
to want little of a complete universality. It is the great apos- 
tasy of St. Paul come to its perfection, the antichrist in its full 
development, and well nigh in total possession of the earth, 
which is the inheritance of Christ and his Church. It is itself 
the Church become worldly, promising to those who imbibe 
its spirit a crown without a .cross, a pathway to glory without 
suffering in the flesh and ceasing from sin ; presenting to them 

* Warburton, in his rapid but vigorous sketch of the change indicated in the 
text, though dwelling rather too exclusively on political relations, has noticed an 
alteration in respect to the beast in its present as compared with its former ap- 
pearance, which perhaps should not have been overlooked: "Religion had now 
exchanged those divine gifts and graces, with which she was first adorned by the 
Holy Spirit, for worldly wealth and grandeur, to which she had arrived by com- 
ing to a good understanding with her old enemy the Red Dragon, or Civil Power : 
of whom having received the trappings of sovereignty, she soon tore from him 
the sovereignty itself A revolution in her fortunes well expressed by her mount- 
ing and riding the Scarlet-colored Beast, the same with the Red Dragon, as 
appears from the like number of heads and horns bestowed upon the monster 
under each denomination. Nay, to mark this identity the stronger, the crowns 
which were on the seven heads of the Red Dragon whUe he was Sovereign, and 
a persecutor of the Virgin, are no longer found on the seven heads of the Scarlet- 
colored Beast, now deprived of sovereignty, and become subject to the Scarlet 
Whore; who, having got the Beast, or degenerated civil power at this advantage, 
rides him at her pleasure, and like another Circe, gives him of her golden cup, full 
of the wine of her abominations and filthiness of fornication, while she herself 
drinks the blood of the saints. The kings of the earth (says the prophet) com- 
mit fornication with the whore; that is, in this impure mixture of the two 
powers, civil and spiritual, both become polluted; the civil uses religion for an 
engine of state, to support tyranny, and the spiritual gets invested with the 
rights of the magistrate, to enable her to persecute." — (Discourse on 2 Peter i, 
20, 21.) 



376 THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF 

not the Lord's cup of manifold temptations and resistance nnto 
blood against sin, but the golden cup of fleshly indulgence and 
foul abominations, (verse 4 ;) not operating as the light of the 
world, and making itself felt throughout the earth as a pre- 
serving salt, but on the contrary corrupting it by the teaching 
of false doctrines, the sanctification of abuses, and the hatred 
and scorn exhibited toward the faith and purity of the saints, 
(xix, 2.) If it is asked where such a Church is to be found, we 
cannot hesitate to reply, in that Church which, in the nature 
and extent of its power and influence, became in the course of 
a few generations after the apostle's time the city in another 
form which reigned over the kings of the earth, (chap, xvii, 18,) 
in the Church pre-eminently of papal Rome. For there it is 
that the essential elements of the autichristian apostasy, world- 
liness of spirit, corruption of doctrine, licentiousness of man- 
ners, hatred and oppression of the truth, have had, not as by 
stealth, or in spite of a better faith, but formally and on prin- 
ciple, their great and most systematic operation: there that 
the queen-like elevation of Babylonish pride and security has 
been most conspicuously manifested ; there, in a word, that the 
ntore distinctive characteristics of the Apocalyptic whore have 
found their most complete and palpable exemplification. 
When inquisition is made for the blood of saints and for those 
who have the mark of the beast, there can be no doubt, among 
such as know the mind of God, that they will be found in the 
communion of Home. 

But while we thus hold the charge to be applicable to the 
Romish Church, primarily and peculiarly, we by no means 
think it should be laid there, as it too commonly is, exclusively. 
The Eastern Church, which does not differ essentially from 
that of Rome, must also be included ; and much, too, that is 
to be found under the name of Protestantism. This Book of 
the Revelation of Jesus Christ, like the book of God's revela- 
tion generally, is pregnant with great principles of good and 
evil, which were to find their application far and wide in the 
coming future ; and no more in regard to the antichrist, than 
to Christ himself, is it to be said, Lo, here he is, or, Lo, there, 
as if he were to be confined within some local territory, or 



THE CHURCH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 377 

pent up in the forms of an external worship. God is no re- 
specter of persons, nor a creator of artificial distinctions. 
Wherever the symptoms of an antichristian spirit, or of a 
groveling and worldly condition, discover themselves in the 
Church, there, we say with onr Lord in a like case, the car- 
cass is, and there, also, the eagles shall be gathered together. 
The assurances which are sometimes held out to the Protestants 
of this land and America, of safety from the doom of anti- 
christ — because, forsooth, " we never formed, or do not now 
form, a street of the mystical Babylon," or because we never 
actually " shed the blood of the martyrs" — sound to our ears 
very much like the flattering unction of those of old, who 
deemed that, as they had not themselves killed the prophets, 
so they should not inherit the condemnation of them who did ; 
or of those who sheltered themselves under the thought of 
being Abraham's seed, as enough to screen them from the 
judgments denounced against their sins. Our Lord showed 
himself to be of a different mind when he charged the one 
class with being children of the devil and the other with being 
in danger of the accumulated retribution due for all the right- 
eons blood that had been shed in bygone generations of the 
world ; and of like mind also were the ancient prophets, who 
so often identified the condition and doom of Israel with those 
of the heathen. (Ezek. xvi ; Amos ix, 7, 8, etc.) In the reali- 
ties of the world's history, as in the visions of the divine seer, 
there are two, and only two, kinds of Christianity — the false 
and the true, the worldly and the spiritual. The one is found 
in those who, in their state and character, correspond essen- 
tially with the symbol of the woman clothed with the sun, 
with the moon beneath her feet, or, which is all one, possess 
what is commended in the seven Asiatic Churches ; the other 
is found in the merely outer court worshipers, who have not 
the faith that overcomes the world, whose citizenship is not in 
heaven, who mind earthly things. All who are not of the 
Lamb's wife, and related to the 'New Jerusalem, are necessarily 
of Babylon, and must share in her inheritance of evil. 

On this point there is much truth in the following remarks 
of a writer to whom we have often already had occasion to 



378 THE PEOPHETICAL FUTURE OF 

refer, and which, we the rather quote, as they exhibit an aspect 
of the matter too much overlooked by writers in this country : 
" The whore is at bottom as old as the woman, just as the visi- 
ble and the invisible Church have scarcely ever been absolutely 
identical. There was a time for Israel of fii'^t betrothed love, 
of which Jeremiah speaks, (chap, ii, 2, 3,) the time of the 
departure from Egypt, and the beginning of their sojourn in 
the wilderness. So, too, was there a time of first love for the 
Chiistian Church, the apostolic age, especially in its earlier 
periods, which are also represented in E-ev. xi, 8 ; xii, 6, 14, as 
those of Eg}^t, and of the entrance into the wilderness. But 
the whorish way very soon began. Israel, as a people, was, in 
general, inconstant ; and the small company of genuine believ- 
inor Israelites, the woman, was at all times onlv as the kernel 
concealed in the shell. This is indicated in the Apocalypse 
itself, since it exhibits the whore as sitting upon all the seven 
worldly kingdoms, thereby extending the idea embodied in her, 
as it does also that of the woman to the times of the Old 
Testament. The prophets describe at large, in particular in 
Ezekiel, in chaps, xvi and xxiii, how shamefully Israel commit- 
ted fornication with the worldly kingdoms, Egypt, Assyria, 
Babylon. The same story is resumed in the Xew Testament. 
In Rev. xii, a representation is given of the first period of 
Christianity, when apostate Israel had become the whore, and 
the young Christian community was the woman — that time of 
first love amoug Christians, when the Church, as a whole, stood 
so faithful to her Lord. But whorish ways soon pressed in 
upon the Christian Church herself, so that the general aspect 
this presents, as seen in chapter xv'ii, no longer looks like the 
woman, but the whore, the great Babylon, in which the people 
of the Lord (equivalent to the woman) were concealed, (chapter 
xviii, 4.) We are met here by a fundamental view of the Bible, 
which is of importance for a right understanding of all proph- 
ecy and history. God has granted to humanity at large for its 
development the two essential communal institutions of State 
and Church : the later in a twofold form as it first existed in 
Old Testament times, with people and state bound together, 
then in the l!Tew Testament with a spirit of liberty. State and 



THE CHURCH AND KINaCOM OF CHRIST. 379 

Cliiircli are noble gifts of God, tlie one a gift of nature, a crea- 
tion-gift ; the other a special gift of grace, the offspring of rev- 
elation. But these divine ordinances reach their proper end 
only in the case of a small number of men. Taken generally, 
they are deformed and desecrated by sin. States fall away 
to the manner of the beast. Churches to that of the whore. 
Still, however, they continue to exist under the divine forbear- 
ance till their purpose is fulfilled ; and under the protection of 
the State, under the superintendence of the Church, under the 
pressure even of their mal- administration, an elect people, the 
chaste and faithful spouse of Christ, are gathered. For this 
kernel the beast and whore serve as a shell, as a scaffolding for 
the true temple. And when the kernel has fully grown, when 
the building is finished, then shall the shell fall off, and the 
scaffolding be dashed in pieces ; and every one who does not 
belong to the temple must have his doom among the rubbish 
that is to be destroyed. So will it be found then, when the 
judgment alights upon Babylon, and the word is heard. Go ye 
out of her, my people. And so was it when the judgment fell 
upon the people of the old covenant, from among the ruins of 
Israel and Jerusalem came forth the young Christian com- 
munity. . . . This absolute separation which the Holy One is 
to make, between light and darkness, between the kingdom of 
God and the world, between the woman and the beast, appears 
strange to us, especially in the present age. Hence do we find 
it so hard to understand the Apocalypse. The key to it 
(according to chap, v, 9) is the cross through which the world 
is crucified to us, and we to the world. The fundamental 
error, however, in our Christian theory and practice, is the 
mingling together of God's kingdom and the world, which the 
Holy Scriptures stigmatize as whoredom. We, therefore, can- 
not understand the divine zeal against it. We want the clear, 
spiritual discernment for the sins of the Church and of Chris- 
tians; we want it for our own sins. Hence we think the 
thunder-words of chap, xvii and xviii cannot be for the Church, 
they must be meant for worldly states. Ah ! had we but the 
eye with which prophets, apostles, and Jesus himself, the friend 
of sinners, looked upon the Church of their times ! The Phar- 



380 THE PEOPHiniCAI. ILTL'RE OF 

isees were. confessedlT. not so very bad a people : they had, in 
their own war. a zeal for divine things. And yet with what 
terrible severity does the Lord rebuke them. The prophets 
lived in great part nnder good kings, snch as HezeMah and 
Josiah : and yet what powerful calls to repentance, and threat- 
eninr- -' ' : ^ ginent. do we hear from their lips. The seductive 
and hereticai teachers with whom the apostles had to do were 
far from being of so dangerous and fondamentaUy erroneous a 
kind as those of the present day : and yet with what words do 
Panl and John. Peter and Jnde, testifv against them. Sin is, 
in God'S eye, a mnch viler thing than it is in man's. Bnt its 
character is vilest in those on whom God has bestowed his 
grace, who possess and know God's word, and are called to 
serve him. The driving after the world in the Chnrch is the 
most worldly and the most profane. Therefore, in its descrip- 
tions of Babylon, the Apocalypse T-'T-mbines the main teatnre^, 
not L'l^T .ji Israel's sins, bnt those :^..;j o: :ae heathen, as they 
are found in the prophets. Therefore it pursues at greater 
length the representation of the whore's abominations and 
judgment than of the beast's. Therefore is the whole section 
which begins with chap, xvii presented under the aspect of the 
judgment of the great whore. Therefore, finally, is there even 
in heaven a quite peculiar joy over her fall more than over that 
of the beast, xviii. 20 ; xix. 5.'* * 

§ 4. Tti.e AiitichrUt of the Apo>yj.hjpse in regard to its Overthrow 

and Final Doom. 

"We pass now to this fall itself; the judgment to be executed 
on the apostate and worldly Church. Here it is nec-essary to 
mark the order of the issues described, the succession as well 
as the connecrion of God's deahngs with the guilty parties. 
There are altogether three, the beast, the false prophet, and 
the whore ; all of them so many wicked parodies and usurpa- 
tions of the divine in Christ and his true Church. And they 
are all so far connected together that they have one and the 
same worldly foundation, one and the same carnal interest at 
* Auberien, Der Prophet Daniel nnd die Offenbanmg Joharirsis. Page 287, Beg. 



THE CHUKCH AJSTD KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 381 

heart; so that it is not possible to conceive of a complete 
destruction of one of them, which should not involve also the 
destruction of the others. Yet in the representation given of 
the final issues respecting them, there is a marked prominence 
and priority in the case of the false Church. Let us mark the 
successive stages of the process, as seen in vision by the prophet. 
First, after it has been said that the kings or kingdoms into 
which the Roman monarchy was to fall, and which were to 
constitute the seventh phase of the beastly power, should have 
given their power and strength to the beast, it is intimated in 
what is plainly a general announcement, (xviii, 14,) that "they 
shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome 
them ; for he is Lord of lords, and King of kings ; and they 
that are with him are called, and chosen, and faithful." This 
brief statement covers, we may say, the whole of what follows 
to the end of chapter xix ; for it is only with the close of this 
chapter that we have the victory of the Lamb over the kings 
and the beast brought to an absolute termination. The whole, 
therefore, of the intervening part must be regarded merely as 
the filling up of the picture, briefly sketched in the verse above 
quoted; it presents in detail the process of overcoming the 
adverse powers. Then, secondly, in this vanquishing process, 
the whore is the party that occupies both the first and the most 
conspicuous place. It is said at chap, xvii, 16, " And the ten 
horns which thou sawest upon the beast shall hate the whore, 
and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh 
and bum her with fire. For God put it into their hearts to do 
his mind, and to do one mind, (so it literally is,) and to give 
their kingdom unto the beast, until the words of God shall be 
fulfilled." There was to be a certain unity of sentiment and 
action among the kingdoms, after they had passed through the 
stage of a temporary conversion, (when the beast seemed as if 
it were killed,) which should show itself in their giving their 
kingdom to the beast, or exhibiting in their general principles 
and behavior much of the beastly nature. And they should do 
this till the words of God should be fulfilled ; but only, it is 
implied, till then ; and when the divine purpose required it, 
they should turn their mind against the whore, and utterly 



382 THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF 

abolish lier existence. The remarkable thing here is that it is 
not said they changed their relation to the beast, while they so 
entirely changed it to the whore : the destruction of the false 
and apostate Chnrch, which had played into the hands of the 
godless, worldly power, and leaned for support on this as this 
again on that, is represented as taking place by itself, while still 
the conflict between the kingdoms and Christ, if begun, was byj 
no means concluded. Lastly, after the description of Baby- 
lon's downfall, or the infliction of judgment and ruin on the 
false Church, and the shouts of triumph raised over her in 
heaven and earth, (detailed at length in chapter xviii and xix, 
1-6.) comes an account of the prosecution of the war with the 
kings or kingdoms of the earth. In this representation the 
scene is transferred from earth to heaven ; for it concerns Christ 
and the true Church, who all along as to position and charac- 
ter, vital power and influence, have been contemplated as 
belonging to the heavenly sphere, in contrast to the inhabiters 
of the earth, who belong to the beast and his agencies. The 
divine King of Zion, therefore, who in this heavenly sphere 
has the direction of all the power and the instrumentalities 
connected with it, appears foremost in the field ; he goes forth 
in battle array, with many crowns on his head, (the symbol of 
complete and universal sovereignty,) and in the character of 
the Word of Grod, with the sharp sword (that, namely, of the 
Word) going out of his mouth. The name and weapon alike 
proclaim him to be a spiritual warrior, who was to prevail 
through that word of truth wliich is the grand instrument and 
manifestation of him as the Personal Word. But he does not 
go thus alone ; the armies of heaven follow him on their white 
horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean ; in other words, 
the representatives of the true Church, spoken of a little before 
as the Lamb's bride, arrayed in fine linen, which is the right- 
eousness of the saints, (xix, 8 ;) and the same, doubtless, that 
were mentioned in chapter xvii, 14, as the called, chosen, and 
faithful band that appeared with Christ as the leader of victory. 
It is not Christ directly, therefore, but Christ in and through 
his faithful Church, by whom this battle was to be waged and 
the victory won. His personal appearance, to the eye of the 



THE CHURCH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 383 

prophet, no more necessitates his visible intermingling in the 
actual conflict, than his opening the seven-sealed book bespoke 
his personal manifestation among men to announce or perform 
the things it contained ; or than the appearance of an angel 
flying through heaven with the everlasting Gospel, (in chapter 
xiv, 6,) necessarily implied the outward spectacle of such an 
apparition. What was seen here by the evangelist in the 
heavenly sphere, like everything else of a like kind in this book, 
was but a representation in vision of what was actually to take 
place in the earthly sphere, a representation of it as going to 
be accomplished by virtue of a power and through means of 
an instrumentality that hold not of earth but of heaven ; that 
belong truly and properly to God. It informs us that a living 
and faithful Church, sustained by the presence, and replen- 
ished with the power and spirit of Jesus, shall rise to the 
ascendant as the false and apostate Church goes down. With 
the Lord upon her side giving eflect to her spiritual armory 
and her work of righteousness, the powers of darkness and cor- 
ruption shall be driven away ; and the beast and the false 
prophet, with all their misguided followers, shall share sub- 
stantially the same fate with Babylon ; that is, their interest 
shall perish, and the saints shall enter on their millennial 
reign of blessedness and peace, holding undisturbed posses- 
sion of the inheritance which they have at length vindicated 
from the serpent's brood, and converted into a habitation of 
righteousness. 

We have said that there is nothing here necessarily imply- 
ing the visible and personal manifestation of Christ upon the 
earth. But neither, of course, is it absolutely excluded. 
Whether he shall actually appear for the decision of this con- 
flict must depend upon the general question whether the 
divine economy shall then have reached such a stage of ad- 
vancement as will render such an appearance fit and proper. 
It rather belongs, therefore, to the subject of our last section, 
where we shall have to treat of the kingdom of Christ in rela- 
tion to his own second coming, and the nature of the millen- 
nium. The questions which here more immediately call for 
consideration have respect to the kind of judgment to be 



384 THE PEOPHETICAL FUTUEE OF 

executed upon the doomed parties, and the manner of its 
execution. "What precisely is its nature ? Is it simply the 
conversion of the world to right thoughts and feelings respect- 
ing the things of God ? Or is it something of a more outward 
and fleshly character ? And whether the one or the other, 
how should the judgment upon the whore come to be repre- 
sented as done by the kingdoms, while these kingdoms still 
appear to be in opposition to Christ, and to be subdued by 
him only at a later period ? 

To refer to the latter point first, we think it would be a 
hasty and perhaps false conclusion from the place given to the 
judgment upon Babylon were we to infer (as is very commonly 
done by writers in this country, also by Auberlen) that popery 
and other forms of a corrupt Christianity are certainly to be 
repudiated by the kingdoms of the world before the work of 
conversion has made much progress among them, and that a 
considerable interval may elapse, possibly for the Church a 
very trying and perilous interval, between the doom of the 
false Church and the doom of the worldly power itself, or the 
destruction of the beast and the false prophet. It may be so ; 
on such a point we would not speak with confidence. It cer- 
tainly is not a new thing in the history of God's dealings, for 
the world, even in its unconverted state, to be made the in- 
strument of punishing and humbling to the dust a corrupt and 
apostate Church. Such was signally the case at three great 
epochs of the past : when Assyria acted as the rod of God's 
anger in scattering backsliding Israel, when Babylon led cap- 
tive the people of Judah, and when, in the last and 'W'orst 
stage of Jewish impenitence and guilt, the liomans took away 
their place and nation. In accordance with a great principle 
in the divine government, the Lord in these, as in many 
similar cases, made the people's sin their punishment ; the 
staff on which they unrighteously leaned pierced their hand ; 
the same world through which the old serpent beguiled them 
into unfaithfulness to God turned against them with the fury 
and might of an Apollyon. And in one sense, we have no 
doubt, the same principle will ever be exemplified anew in so 
far as the same course is pursued. But there may be different 



THE CHURCH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 885 

modes of accomplisliiiig it, and it may not be necessary that 
the world, when employed in the work of retribution, should 
always remain in precisely the same state as it was when used 
as an instrument and occasion of sin. This must depend on 
circumstances, and manifestly the circumstances in respect to 
the Church's relation to the world at the period of the ancient 
judgments referred to differed very materially from those 
which belong to the carnal and apostate Church of modern 
times. , In the one case the two parties stood formally apart 
from each other, and the relation, however close, was still only 
political and outward ; in the other there is an actual amalga- 
mation, the Church having in its degeneracy given itself to 
the service of the world, and the world in its several kingdoms 
identified itself with the Church. So that from the very 
nature of the case the execution of a work of judgment now 
upon the Church by the world must involve much more than 
a mere change of external relationship ; it must imply a revo- 
lution in the world's own sentiments on the subject of religion, 
since what in this respect it embraced before it is now to hate 
and repudiate. Here again it is necessary not to look merely 
into the agreements between Old and 'New Testament things, 
but to take account also of the differences, and especially to 
bear in mind how very greatly more everything in connection 
with the affairs of God's kingdom has come to assume an 
inward and diffusive character than it formerly possessed-. 
It is also to be borne in mind that in the pictorial delineations 
of prophecy the moral element often discovers itself even in 
the mode of representation adopted, and that to give promi- 
nence to this the place of priority in judgment is sometimes 
assigned to the party which has been the worst in guilt, 
though it may not actually be the one that has first to fall. 
Thus in the vision of Nebuchadnezzar the great stone is repre- 
sented as smiting the image first upon the toes, and proceeding 
upward till the whole was crushed to atoms, the head last : 
although in the reality the order was the reverse, and the last 
is placed first in the vision, merely because it seemed ripest 
for destruction, and stood most prominent in the eye of the 

mind. These considerations ought to be taken into account 

25 



386 THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF 

here, not as of themselves disproving the notion of a priority 
in point of time in the world's execution of judgment upon 
Babylon before it is itself either judged or converted, but as 
showing the necessity of cautious and careful inquiry in de- 
termining the probable sequence of such events. 

Indeed it might seem to accord best with the nature of the 
case, viewed in respect to its singular complexity and inter- 
connected relationships, that no precise order should be marked 
out definitely beforehand as necessary or certain in every case 
to be followed. Amid the prevailing unity there could not 
fail to be a manifold diversity in the degrees of apostasy and 
guilt adhering at different times and places to the false 
Church ; and there naturally would be a corresponding diver- 
sity in the way and manner in which the destined judgment 
should take effect. History too confirms the impression, for it 
shows in the partial judgments already executed upon the apos- 
tasy a very considerable diversity, both in respect to the rela- 
tive time and the precise manner of its accomplishment. In 
many communities at the Reformation it was through a pro- 
cess of enlightenment and conversion that the world was 
brought to hate the whore, and shake itself free from her 
abominations. But in the France of last century this work of 
hatred and judgment was carried on, while the kingdom gave 
its .strength and power even more than ever to the beast ; it 
had light enough from its own oracles to repudiate a false 
Christianity, but none to receive and cherish the true ; and so, 
we cannot doubt, would it be with many papal regions of the 
present day if circumstances should allow them to embody 
their opinions in action. In Spain and Italy it is much more 
the worldly power of the kingdoms than the false Church in 
them which has hitherto been smitten with judgment. Such 
ascertained diversities in the past may readily be supposed to 
extend into the future, and if so, then sometimes the worldli- 
ness and corruption of the Church, sometimes those of the 
kingdoms, shall appear to be the first to be judged and cast 
out. But in truth, from the connection subsisting between 
the two, a complete work of judgment cannot be conceived to 
take place without both being alike involved in it. Any 



TPIE CHURCH AND KINGDOM QF CHRIST. 387 

priority that may be practicable can belong only to the 
beginning, not to the consummation of the process. On the 
one side the existence of the whore implies the existence of 
the beast, or the ungodly state of the world ; and on the 
other, so long as the beast has a horn left, human nature 
being what it is, the whore will find means somehow to hang 
by it. 

Accordingly, in the Apocalyptic representation, nothing of 
a very definite kind in this respect is indicated. While the 
judgment upon Babylon has a fearful prominence assigned to 
it, and is brought to a close before the war against the kings 
of the earth, as identified with the beast and the false prophet, 
is particularly related, still the notice of this war has so far 
the precedence given to it that it is cursorily mentioned even 
before the kings are said to have turned against the whore, 
(Chap, xvii, 14.) It may, therefore, be supposed to have at 
least commenced and made some progress before the period of 
Babylon's destruction. At the same time, if the war itself is 
essentially a spiritual one ; if its grand characteristic and 
object is to stand in overcoming their hostility to the cause of 
Christ, and bringing them from the service and interest of 
Satan to those of the living God ; if this is the nature of the 
conflict mdicated and the victory to be won, then, in the very 
nature of things, the doom of Babylon, that is, the general 
hatred and repudiation of a false and corrupt Christianity, 
must always more or less precede the subversion of the worldly 
spirit itself. All experience testifies how much easier it is to 
detect and abhor hypocrisy than heartily to embrace the 
truth, to abjure the pretensions of a false religion than to 
become dead to the world, and alive to the interests of God's 
spiritual kingdom. In the social as well as the personal 
sphere there will naturally be some interval between the two, 
not unfrequently a very considerable one, and one attended 
with struggles and dangers peculiar to itseltl JSTor when the 
general course of events and the particular tendencies of the 
present age are duly considered, especially when it is reflected 
what advances the world is making in science, literature, and 
philosophy, bow in every department the knowledge con- 



388 THE PEOPHETICAL FUTUKE OF 

nected with its own earth-sprung culture is growing and 
rising continually nearer in its assimilation to the divine, can 
it be deemed otherwise than probable that light may very 
generally be diffused sufficient to beget a hatred of popery 
and the false forms of Christianity, while the idolatry of self 
and the world holds its place as before, or even waxes bolder 
for a time in its pretensions. In the negative part of the 
process profane science and learning may do the part they 
have often done already ; they may expose and reject the 
falsehood, corruption, and hypocrisy which enter into the 
religion of an apostate and spurious Christianity, and thereby 
prepare the way for its formal abolition. But higher elements 
will assuredly be required to complete the process. Worldly 
negations can never wholly uproot what has so many grounds 
of support in the constitution of society and the condition of 
the human heart. And only the reception of that divine 
truth which reunites the soul to God and effectually expels 
the world from the heart will be sufficient to work the final 
extirpation of the antichrist. So that the judgment of the 
whore can only in part precede that of the beast and the false 
prophet, or of the world itself in its self-exalting and God- 
opposing tendencies. They have been too closely united in 
their lives to be in their deaths far divided. 

But is the war, with its final issues on the side of Christ's 
cause and kingdom, of the kind referred to ? Is this great 
conflict to be carried on and decided mainly by the use of 
spiritual weapons, and not rather (as is very commonly con- 
ceived) by some obtrusive and overwhelming displays of 
divine power and glory? Is it not by the compulsion of 
resistless might rather than by moral suasion that the evil is 
to be driven out, and the field won for the saints ? To answer 
such questions we must call in the aid of collateral considera- 
tions, as there is nothing in the representation of St. John 
which can fairly be regarded as absolutely decisive on the 
subject. He distinctly enough intimates that the judgment of 
one of the obnoxious parties — the repudiation and downfall of 
Babylon — certainly one grand object and result of the war, is 
to be mainly accomplished by the instrumentality of the king- 



THE CHUECH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 389 

doms which had formerly given her their homage ; by a 
change of mind on their part, or a healthier tone of thought 
and feeling, the judgment written is to be enforced. And if 
so much thus, one naturally asks, why not more ? why not the 
whole ? Yet possibly it might be wrong to extend the in- 
ference so far, as the means capable to a large extent of sub- 
verting the false might fail in establishing the true ; while 
they may go far to procure the fall of a corrupt Church, they 
yet may come short of reforming an ungodly world. But 
there are not wanting considerations to show that the spiritual 
element is chiefly to prevail in the matter, and that all else 
can be little more than incidental and subsidiary. 

First of all, the very nature of the conflict points in this 
direction. It is a conflict with the error and hypocrisy, the 
selfishness and corruption of the world ; and these are to be 
driven from the souls of men and cast into the bottomless 
abyss, not by any mechanical process or external emanations 
even of divine glory, but by the truth of Christ established in 
the heart and conscience. " This is the victory that overcom- 
eth the world, even our faith " — the only victory that is real 
and enduring. Then, secondly, the victory achieved by Christ 
himself, and the judgment executed by him directly upon the 
adversary, was entirely of this description ; it was obtained 
exclusively by the manifestation of the truth of God, and in 
doing and suffering, fulfilling his righteous will. ]^ow in the 
progress and issues of the divine kingdom everything takes its 
impress and direction from the personal Saviour, and the con- 
flict which is to be waged by the Church in the world in so 
far as it is properly maintained, is but the reflex of that in 
which Christ has himself engaged and overcome. It would be 
to quit the higher field for a lower, and make the spiritual 
give way to the carnal, were the Church to be indebted for 
her success chiefly to the application of external force or phys- 
ical suffering. She triumphs far more nobly, and executes 
judgment greatly more thorough and complete when, by the 
aid of spiritual appliances, she causes the truth to be felt in its 
proper force and magnitude. So is it also in nature : " the 
light in its silent, beneficent operations is far mightier than 



390 THE PEOPHETICAL FUTUEE OF 

the lightning, notwithstanding the roar that followa it." It 
■was the weak element in the conquests won and the judg- 
ments wronght npon the ungodliness of the world through 
Israel of old that they had in them so much of what was 
merely outward, so little of the Spirit's internal power of con- 
viction to penetrate the heart, and slay its enmity to God in 
the root. And it is only by having what was then compara- 
tively wanted — by the beneficent operation of the Spirit of 
truth and holiness in the Church and throuo:h her instrument- 
ality, not by calling down fire from heaven, or sho^^ng won- 
ders from the deep, that the effectual overthrow may be 
expected of the adversary's dominion in the world. Thu'dly, 
there is the remarkable circumstance mentioned in chap, xiv, 
6-8, of the appearance of an angel (emblem, beyond doubt, of 
the Church in her active ministrations) speeding liis way with 
the Gospel among all nations, and calling on them to fear and 
worship God, and this as the immediate precursor of Babylon's 
doom, carrying in its train the downfall of the great apostasy. 
For immediately on that being done the cry is reported to 
have been heard that Babylon was fallen. What can this 
action import but that the Church was to look back for the 
driving back of the evil that oppressed her, not to any miracu- 
lous interposition in her behalf, but to the revival of that test- 
imony which had been so shamefully abandoned in the apos- 
tasv, and the virtue of that blood which had been so much 
buried out of sight ! She must grasp anew and with fresh 
energy display the old banner of the faith that was delivered 
to the saints, and in God's name make war with aE the powers 
of darkness and the forms of corruption. "Were there but faith 
for this among the people of God — faith to realize that the 
title to the inheritance is already won for them, and that it is 
their calling and destiny to make it good against all opposi- 
tion, who can tell what results might be accomplished I what 
springtimes of life and blessing might yet burst forth upon 
the world ! 

That in the circumstances in which the world is placed, with 
so many powers of evil working in it, and forms of corruption 
established on every side, the struggle may be long and ardu- 



THE CHUKCH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 391 

ous, is only what may be expected. And there may also be 
expected in its progress many interminglings of external judg- 
ment, political convulsions, desolating wars and tumults, which 
the fermentings of opinion and the operation of the truth 
themselves will naturally tend to bring on ; and beside these 
perhaps also pestilences, famines, fearful troubles, and disturb- 
ances in nature to discomfit the worshipers of nature, and 
drive them to seek for other means and resources than it can 
supply. IS^ay, it is far from improbable that before the world 
is cured of the distempers that rage in it, and brought heartily 
to embrace and carry out the principles of the Gospel of 
Christ, times of uproar and distress may have to be appointed 
for it such as have not been witnessed in the past ; such times 
as are spoken of by our Lord when all things shall seem preg- 
nant with evil and involved in gloom ; when it shall be as if 
the sun were darkened, and the moon did not give her light, 
and the stars dropped from the firmament, and the powers of 
the heavens were shaken. We need not be at all surprised if 
such a time should come in the course of this great conflict, 
and especially when it is drawing toward its close, and the 
adversary knows that his time is short. Though the battle by 
that time may have been in great part won, yet he may not 
quit his hold without more fiercely than ever rending his 
victim. And how but amid great agitations and convulsive 
movements can the basis be laid of a new and permanently 
good order of things ? The tm-moil, however, shall not last, 
the days of evil shall be shortened ; and whatever there may 
be connected with them of external appliances, whether in 
the higher or the lower sphere, can only come to second and 
enforce the grand agency of a living Church with her armor 
of righteousness and the Spirit of grace making it efiectual. 
May we not appeal for confirmation to the history of the past ? 
What great deliverance has ever been wrought for the king- 
dom of God apart from this spiritual agency ? What did even 
our Lord's personal appearance and astounding miracles eftect 
compared with the showers of grace and blessing that came 
down at Pentecost, and after it ? Or compare the spiritual 
work of the Eeformation with the outburst of the French 



392 THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF 

ReYolution. Viewed in an external aspect, this last event, no 
doubt, with its convulsive throes and fiery ebullitions, its mer- 
ciless retributions for abused power, its confiscations of Church 
property, and summary proceedings against a corrupt clergy 
and a superstitious worship, had most the appearance of the 
execution of a work of judgment on apostate Rome : and yet 
how little ultimately did it effect compared with the other ? 
The Reformation struck less violently, but it struck far more 
powerfully ; it was a blow at the root. The secret of its 
strength lay in resorting so little to physical force, and so 
much to divine truth and principle. It was distinguished only 
for the free and copious use made in it of the instrumentality 
heralded by the angelic precursor of Babylon's fall — the 
preaching of the everlasting Gospel. On this account pre- 
eminently it proved a season of refreshment to the world, scat- 
tered evervwhere the seeds of faith and love, undermined the 
strongholds of error and corruption, and breathed a healthier 
tone through the whole framework of society. This, there- 
fore, is the kind of work, refreshing times like these are the 
operations, on which more especially the issue of the conflict 
is to turn : for them the long-suffering of God waits, suspend- 
ing, that they may precede, the time for the final executions 
of judgment ; for them the risen Saviour continues to abide 
within the vail, that he may dispense of the Spirit's fullness of 
life and blessing, to help forward the cause of the world's 
regeneration. And for the Church in any of her members or 
branches to stand aloof from such operations, to neglect the 
word of God and prayer, to allow abuses to remain unrecti- 
fied, to lay down her testimony against prevailing corruptions, 
to leave unoccupied any available channel at home or abroad 
for shedding forth the light of the Gospel, and advancing the 
interests of righteousness ; for the Church so to act, in the 
hope that the work wliich might and should be done hy her, 
shall somehow be done for her by an outward and judicial 
display of divine power, were but to prove herself unworthy 
of her calling, and to continue in sin, not that grace, but 
(still worse) that iniquity first, and then judgment, may 
abound. 



THE CHURCH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 393 



SECTION III. 

SUPPLEMENTARY : CONTAINING AN OUTLINE OF THE GENERAL 
PLAN OF THE APOCALYPSE, FROM CHAP. V TO THE CLOSE OF 
CHAP. XIX, WITH REFERENCE MORE ESPECIALLY TO THE DIS- 
TINCTIVE CHARACTER AND RELATIVE ORDER OF THE THREE 
GREAT SERIES OF THE SEALS, THE TRUMPETS AND THE VIALS. 

1. Tha parts of the Apocalypse more particularly referred to 
in the two preceding sections are those which indicate gener- 
ally the character and relations, the dangers, struggles, and 
triumphs of the Church, from the planting of Christiaxiity to 
the introduction of the millennium. They are comprised mainly 
in the chapters which reach from the beginning of the eleventh 
to the close of the nineteenth. But there are other things also 
in these chapters, the actions especially of the vials, in part 
also of the trumpets, and the times and seasons mentioned, of 
which no special notice has yet been taken. Before proceed- 
ing, therefore, to the consideration of the topics embraced in 
the three concluding chapters of the Apocalypse, we propose 
to attempt a brief synopsis and explanation of the apocalyptic 
scheme, as contained in chaps, v to xix ; which may be passed 
over by those who are disinclined to enter into such an investi- 
gation. Our main object in it will be to arrive at the proper 
reading of the symbols themselves^ and their mutual relation to 
each other ^ as therein must be sought the key to the structural 
arrangement and general design of the whole scheme, and the 
ground of its more particular application to specific movements 
or results in Divine Providence. 

2. The first thing that presents itself to our notice is the 
account given in chap, v of the seven-sealed book, remarkable 
not onlv for the number of its seals, but also for the marvelous 
difficulty connected with the opening of them. After the 
challenge had been thrown out to the wide universe for any 
one to attempt it, no one, it is said, was found capable of under- 
taking the task, but the Lion of the tribe of Judah, and the 
Root of David. It is clear from this, that by the opening of 



394: THE PKOPHETICAL FUTUEE OF 

the book, something more must have been meant than the mere 
disclosure of its contents ; it must have involved, besides, the 
personal appropriation of these, with a view to their actual 
accomplishment. IS^othing else could have created so gigantic 
a difficulty. It is clear, also, from the designation of Christ on 
the occasion, as the Lion of the tribe of Judah and the Root of 
David, that the book must have borne respect to a work of war 
and conquest; a work in which heroic energy and lion-like 
strength should require to be put forth, and that, too, for the 
purpose of vindicating the peculiar honor and blessing secured 
In covenant to the house of David. What then was this ? ISTo 
other than the universal possession and sovereignty of the earth, 
the right to reign over it, to its uttermost bounds, in the name 
of the Lord. (Gen. xlix, 9, 10 ; Num. xxiv, 9 ; Psa. ii, xxii, etc.) 
The book, therefore, with which none but this royal personage 
could intermeddle, was, in other words, the book of the inher- 
itance, laying open the way by which the possession must be 
made good. And it was a sealed book — seven times sealed — 
not only because there were to be successive stages in the 
course, such as might fitly be distributed into that number, but 
because the course itself was to be a hidden one ; not patent to 
men's view nor one they could beforehand have anticipated, 
but a complicated mystery lying under the secrecy of a seven- 
fold seal. Hence, as if to explain where peculiarly the mystery 
lay, it is in the character not of a lion-like hero, or royal per- 
sonage, but " of a lamb as it had been slain," that Christ is 
seen approaching to take the book, and enter on the task of 
disclosing and fulfilling its burden. The songs of praise, also, 
that are presently afterward ascribed to him by the redeemed, 
celebrate his worth and goodness, especially on this account, 
that he had " redeemed them by his blood ;" and they declared 
him to be worthy to take the book, and open the seals thereof, 
because of his having been slain, and redeemed to himself a 
people whom he has made kings and priests unto God. When 
they further add, " And we shall reign on the earth," they 
point not only to the expected realization of their hopes, but 
also to the assurance which the action with the book had 
brought in respect to that expectation ; they now see the end 



THE CHURCH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 395 

desired and looked for clearly in prospect. Plainly, therefore, 
the mystery of this book is the mystery of Christ's cross and 
crown : all that is wonderful and arduous in the working out 
of his claim to the conquest and dominion of the earth has its 
ex^anation in the difficulty of getting men within the profess- 
ing Church and without to receive the doctrine of a crucified 
Redeemer, as the foundation of all blessing, and to carry out 
the spirit of humble, holy, self-sacrificing, and devoted"^ love 
which it breathes. To bring this doctrine and this spirit to the 
ascendant in the affairs of men, is the mystery and the burden 
of the seven-sealed book. 

3. Though it is our object rather to explain the symbolical 
structure and meaning of the prophecy before us than to dis- 
cuss the topics which it embraces, yet we pause here for a 
moment to state, that the sealed book having such a purport 
as we have now stated, there necessarily arise two great aims 
to be prosecuted in the sequel. There must be first the gath- 
ering out and preparing of a people on the ground of the doc- 
trine of the cross ; and then the preparing of the earth for their 
inheritance by the dispossessing of the powers of evil, who 
resist or corrupt the doctrine, that it may become an abode of 
righteousness. In the typical relation of ancient Israel, we see 
precisely the same twofold aim prosecuted. An elect people 
had in the first instance to be found ; found both in sufficient 
numbers to occupy the destined inheritance, and in such a 
moral condition as might in some measure fit them for accom- 
plishing the ends designed by its occupation. This itself re- 
quired a long period of preparation, during which alternately 
trial and blessing, judgment and mercy, now the oppression 
and again the protection of the world were brought into play. 
And when, through the operation of such varied and conflict- 
ing forces the result as regards the people had been in good 
part attained, then followed the prosecution of the other branch 
of the divine scheme ; the occupation of the inheritance by 
judging and dispossessing the adversaries. The same, substan- 
tially, in both respects, falls to be done now by Christ in con- 
nection with his redeemed people, only with the usual differ- 
ences that distinguish the relations of the antitype from those 



396 THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OP 

of the type. All has now to be conducted on an immensely 
larger scale, and in the sphere more immediately of spiritual 
realities rather than of sensible transactions ; by means, also, 
of the Word and Spirit of truth, not of fleshly weapons and 
political arrangements. What in the earlier line of things was 
done but imperfectly, with defection and failure adhering to 
the last, and marring the completeness of the work, must now, 
by reason of the higher agency employed, and the more 
advanced stage that has been reached in the divine economy, 
be perfectly realized ; the result must be one altogether worthy 
. of him who conducts it to its destined completion ; it must pro- 
vide both a people thoroughly prepared for the inheritance, 
and an inheritance completely won and beautified for their 
possession. But such a result will inevitably require a most 
complicated machinery of operations to effect it ; and the his- 
tory may well be expected to be marvelous, both for the good 
and the evil, the processes of judgment as well as of mercy, 
with which it is sure to be intermingled. 

4. To return, however, to our more proper business. From 
the very nature and objects of the sealed book, it would seem 
that its symbolical contents must cover the entire field of the 
future militant condition of the Church, and reach down to the 
time when the mystery of God shall be finished by the install- 
ing of the Church with regal power and glory in the possession 
of the inheritance. Such being the case, any other prophetic 
symbols, or series of prophetic symbols that follow, must stand 
to it in the relation of synchronal, not of continuative and pos- 
terior developments. To this conclusion, also, the analogy of 
other portions of prophetic Scripture points. It is a general 
characteristic in the structure of prophecy, that of its delinea- 
tions in any particular line or class of relations, each picture 
stands complete in itself. In that specific direction the pro- 
phetic outline is conducted to a close. Many of our Lord's 
parables are striking exemplifications of this ; those, for exam- 
ple, of the sower, of the wheat and tares, of the talents, of the 
ten virgins, since they, one and all, present the divine kingdom 
under so many distinct images or aspects, and in connection 
with these, disclose its progressive advancement and final 



THE CHURCH AXD KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 397 

issues.* The Messianic Psalms — in particular, Psa. ii, xxii, xlv, 
Ixxii, ex — are formed after tlie same pattern ; and so are many 
predictions in the greater prophets, such as Isa. ii, 1-5 ; xi, 1-9 ; 
xlix, liii ; Ezek. iv, xyi, xxxiv. But the visions in Daniel make 
the nearest approach in form to those of the Apocalypse ; and 
there we find the characteristic in question yery strongly 
marked. In Daniel the prospective history of God's kingdom, 
in its relation to the world and its own varied fortunes, is pre- 
sented under the aspect of a twofold series of symbols ; first, 
that of the composite image, and the stone cut from the mount- 
ain ; then that of the difierent beasts out of the sea, and one 
like a Son of man from heaven. And each of these delinea- 
tions covers the same space ; continues the history in its own 
specific line to a close ; so that they are necessarily synchronal, 
not successive, in their relation to each other. But along with 
these there are supplementary revelations, one of them also 
exhibiting a most important aspect of the affairs of the king- 
dom, entirely omitted in the two former visions ; that, namely, 
in chap, ix, which has respect to the first appearance of Mes- 
siah and his expiatory death. Others do not introduce any- 
thing entirely excluded from the first pair, but only present 
more in detail particular traits of the symbolic picture con- 
tained in them. Of this class are the visions in chapters viii 
and xi. The analogies, therefore, furnished by other portions 
of the prophetic field, are of such a nature as to confirm the 
expectation that the seal series in this book shall form a com- 
plete whole in itself; and that any other series, or individual 

* Hence the improprietj, too often exhibited by writers on prophecy, of taking 
up the representation in a particular parable and pressing it to the uttermost, as if 
it contained the whole. This is to do violence to the principle on which they are 
constructed, and inevitably leads to the giving of undue prominence to individual 
traits, and making the instruction in one parable clash with that of another. Thus 
the parable of the tares and the wheat represents the divine kingdom as continuing 
to the end more or less intermingled with corrupt principles and false membens; 
while in the parable of the leaven the divine element appears fermenting and work- 
ing on till the whole sphere participate in the renovating change. Two different 
aspects, but perfectly consistent, if the parts in which they differ are not isolated 
and unduly pressed, but viewed the one as the complement of the other. By the 
first we learn that the evil shall never be wholly extirpated (though it may be in- 
definitely diminished) till the final consummation ; by the second, that the good 
shall not cease to diffuse itself till it has become co-extensive with humanity. 



398 THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF 

representations which may follow, shall be either wholly, or in 
part, synchronal; that is, they shall either, under some new 
aspect, conduct the history of the divine kingdom over the 
same ground, or bring more fully and particularly into view 
certain definite portions of the territory. It is the latter, per- 
haps, that we might chiefly expect to find ; as in connected 
prophecies, like those of this book, it is usual not so much toj 
give diverse exhibitions of the same totality as rather to sup- 
plement what may already have been comprehensively, though 
somewhat briefly, unfolded, by the introduction of more specific 
representations. 

5. We turn, then, to the three great series of symbols, for 
the purpose, in the first instance, of ascertaining whether what 
has now been suggested seems to be the case. In doing so, we 
look simply at the symbolic representations themselves^ and 
take them in their broader aspect — as such representations 
ought always to be taken * — ^in order to learn if any traces are 
to be found in them of synchronal order and connection. N^ow 
the first series, that of the seals, certainly has the appearance of 
forming by itself an entire and comprehensive whole. It com- 
mences with the representation of one going forth in the atti- 
tude of a warrior, conquering and to conquer, and it ends with 
the show of a complete and universal subjugation. Under the 
sixth seal the whole world appears in the last throes of trouble 
and confusion ; nature, in all its departments, is trembling and 
convulsed ; the mountains flit away like shadows ; men of 
every rank and degree rush in dismay from the presence of Him 
whom they had formerly despised, and seek a hiding-place from 
'^ the wrath of the Lamb." And when the next and final seal 
opens, all is silence. The struggle of conflict is over, the noise 
and tumult of war have ceased, and the whole field lies pros- 
trate before the one sovereign and undisputed Lord. Taken 
by itself, therefore, the delineation is complete. It leaves 
much, indeed, that might be added as to the manner in which 
the process of resistance and defeat went on, and how the 
respective parties stood when the struggle came to a close. 
Yet one does not see how there could be any further continu- 

* See page 149. 



THE CHURCH A^D KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 399 

ation in tlie same line of things ; so far as concerns mere con- 
flict and victory, the end has been reached.* In collateral 
directions, however, there was evidently not only room, but 
much need, also, for supplementary revelations; for in the 
abrupt and stately march of those seals everything appears in 
the mass. Classes of objects or events are described ; but noth- 
ing is indicated respecting the more particular relations of the 
Church and the world. And at one remarkable stage of the 
proceedings an appearance presents itself which manifestly 
implies much that is untold, and from its very nature seems to 
call for more detailed representations. It occurs in the action 
of the fifth seal, where were " seen under the altar the souls of 
them that were slain for the "Word of God, and for the testi- 
mony which they held ;" whence it appears that a fierce and 
bloody persecution of the true Church had preceded, or was 
then in progress, while yet nothing had been expressly related 
of that description under the earlier seals. Turning, however, 
to chap, xi, 7, we find an indication given of it in what is writ- 
ten of the faithful witnesses, whom the beast from the bottom- 
less pit was to overcome and kill. But this forms part of the 
transactions belonging to the sixth trumpet, which may there- 
fore be regarded as probably synchronizing with the events of 
the fifth seal, and one or more of the preceding. We find it 
again at chap, xii, 11, in what is said of the violence of the 
dragon after the ascension of Christ. He persecuted to the 

* We are simply, it must be remembered, endeavoring to read the language and 
import of the symbols, not attempting to find for them any specific application. 
But the mere description implies that we regard the sixth seal as having some 
other and higher reference than that which would confine it to the age of Constan- 
tine. What then took place was a very mingled good, and rather altered the polit- 
ical relations of Chrisiianity than tended materially to aid it in securing such a 
triumph as it is the more peculiar object of the Apocalypse to predict and help for- 
ward. To say nothing of the masses of heathenism which stood aide by side with 
the formal Christianity of the empire, not only in Constantine's time, but for cen- 
turies afterward, let any one compare with the light furnished by late researclies 
into Cliurch history the Ciiristianity of the fourth and fifth centuries with that de- 
picted in the second and third chapters of this book, and ask seriously whether in 
the eye of the apocalyptist the comparatively superficial change which marked the 
age of Constantino could liave, in any adequate degree, substantiated the magnifi- 
cent imagery of the sixth seal. It is impossible that such a change could have 
exhibited more than the faintest shadow of what is there delineated. 



400 THE PEOPHETICAL FUTUEE OF 

death the followers of Christ, who, even in death, overcame him • 
by the blood of the Lamb, and the word of their testimony. 
Still, again, it appears at chapter xiii, 7, in the transactions 
ascribed to the beast after the healing of his wonnd ; that is, in 
the last great phase of his manifestation, when, in conjunction 
with the whore, he made war with the saints, and shed their 
blood. (Compare chap, xvii, 6.) At different stages and periods, 
then, there was to be this suffering unto death for the testimony 
of Jesus ; and as the victims are spoken of quite generally 
under the fifth seal, as they appear simply as the class who had 
so suffered already, or were yet to suffer, there can be no pro- 
priety in understanding the description of any portion less than 
the whole. We must hold the accounts in the later visions to 
contain the particulars which make up the collective repre- 
sentation given in the fifth seal, so that this seal and the fifth 
trumpet, in part, at least, must lie alongside each other. The 
seventh trumpet, also, which, after great manifestations of 
wrath, and turning of things upside down, issues in the procla- 
mation of the kingdom or dominion of the world havinor become 
our Lord and his Christ's, plainly coincides with the closing 
action of the seals. It brings matters to a termination in its 
peculiar line of things, and with a precisely similar result. 
The dominion of the world becoming Christ's in the one line, 
corresponds to the disappearance in the other of all power and 
authority opposed to Christ's, and the establishment of utter 
silence and prostration before him. 

6. The connection between the series of the trumpets and 
that of the vials is of a still more palpable and pervading kind, 
and has many more points of contact than those noticed 
between the seals and subsequent visions. The two series 
indeed run throughout so closely parallel in regard to the 
objects and operations described in them that it is scarcely 
possible to believe they can relate to two disparate and con- 
secutive lines of procedure. The first trumpet has for its 
scene of action the earthy on which it represents fire and hail 
mLDgled with blood being cast, and in like manner the first 
vial is poured upon the earthy causing a noisome and grievou3 
sore to those that dwell on it. The second trumpet turns the 



THE CHUECH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 401 

sea into blood ; the second vial is poured into the sea^ and it 
becomes as the blood of a dead man. The third trumpet 
brings the visitation of the star Wormwood upon the rivers 
and fountains of waters^ and renders them deadly ; the third 
vial is poured upon the rivers and fountains of waters, and 
they become blood. When the fourth trumpet sounds the 
sun is smitten to the extent of a third part, as also the moon 
and the stars ; the fourth vial is poured upon the sun^ and he 
scorches men with fire. At the sound of the fifth trumpet the 
hottomless pit is opened, and hordes of scorpion-locusts issue 
forth with most destructive power; the fifth vial is poured 
upon the seat of the heast, which is but another name for the 
bottomless pit, as it was from thence he ascended after his 
wound was healed, (chap, xi, T; xvii, 8,) and the reference 
here is undoubtedly to a period subsequent to that. The 
sounding of the sixth trumpet looses the four angels in the 
great river Euphrates, who presently send forth their armed 
myriads, riding on horses with breastplates of fire, with heads 
like lions, and fire, smoke, and brimstone going out of their 
mouths ; the sixth vial is also poured upon the great river 
Euphrates, so that its water was dried up, and the way of the 
kings of the East was prepared, and unclean beasts, the spirits 
of devils, issued out of the mouth of the dragon, and of the 
beast, and of the false prophet. Finally, with the sound of 
the seventh trumpet gr^eat voices in heaven are heard, for the 
day of God's wrath is come, the final retributions of good and 
evil are to be awarded, and the sovereignty of the world 
passes into the hands of Christ ; so when the last vial is 
poured into the air a great voice comes out of the temple of 
heawen from the throne, saying, " It is done ;" for the day of 
recompense has arrived, and great Babylon comes in remem- 
brance before God. It is surely against all reasonable proba- 
bility to suppose that these two lines of symbolic representa- 
tion, touching at so many points, alike in their commence- 
ment, their progress, and their termination, can relate to 
dispensations of Providence wholly unconnected, and to 
periods of time separated from each other by the lapse of 

ages. It -is immeasurably more probable that they are but 

26 



402 THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF 

different aspects of substantially the same course of procedure, 
different merely from the parties subjected to it being contem- 
plated in somewhat different relations. !N"or would it be pos- 
sible if two entire series of symbolical delineations, following 
so nearly in the same track, were yet to point to events quite 
remote and diverse, to vindicate such delineations from the 
charge of arbitrariness and indetermination. 

On the whole, therefore, we deem it morally certain, from 
a simple comparison of the prophetical visions before us, apart 
altogether from any specific sense or application that may be 
given to them, that each is in itself complete, and in the par- 
ticular province it occupies leaves nothing more to be done. 
They cannot, therefore, refer to consecutive periods in the 
history of God's dispensations, the next always beginning 
where the previous one ends ; but must be viewed as indicat- 
ing parallel though, in some respects, diverse operations. 
Each alike ends with " a great earthquake," (chap, vi, 12 ; 
ix, 19 ; xvi, 18,) which shakes everything to its foundations, 
and prepares the way for a new and better order of things. 
Let us then look at each series separately, that by a con- 
sideration of the symbols themselves and the actions respect- 
ively connected with them we may (if possible) learn the 
distinctive nature of each, and their relative place and object 
in the divine dispensations. We shall find that by this closer 
sm-vey other parallelisms will discover themselves than those 
yet noticed, 

7. The first series, that of the seals, contains (as has been 
already stated) a representation of the unfolding, not theoretic- 
ally merely, but practically also, the actual progression of the 
Lord's mysterious work of conquest, whereby the earth be- 
comes his possession. It is mysterious, because of the char- 
acter in which he addresses himself to the work, as a Lamb 
that had been slain, or the crucified Redeemer, and from the 
peculiar manner in which he proceeds to make good his title 
to the possession. The opening of the first seal presents the 
proper claimant, the only party that has the right and destiny 
to the dominion of the world, namely, Christ, and his body, 
the Church. They have their representation in a warrior on 



THE CHURCH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 403 

a white horse, having a crown given him, in token of nni- 
versal sovereignty, and "going forth conquering and that he 
might conquer," (Iva vt-tcrja?]^) that is, for the very purpose of 
conquering, and with the certainty that he should do so. 
And had there been upon earth anything like the same feeling 
which prevails in the heavenly places ; had men been every- 
where disposed and ready to count the Lamb worthy to 
receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and 
honor, and glory, righteousness and peace had been diffused 
around, and the world had become a field of blessing. But a 
different state of mind is found to prevail ; the worldly power 
in all its dominant forms of authority and influence refuses to 
own the right as exhibited by the representations of Jesus, 
and feels, as if w^ithout having aught to do with him, it could 
secure for itself peaceable and blessed possession of the worldly 
domain. It must, therefore, be taught the contrary ; and so, 
at the opening of the next three seals, there come forth suc- 
cessively three riders of a very different stamp from the first. 
A rider appears first on a red horse, having power given him 
to take away peace from the earth, and cause men to kill one 
another ; then one on a black horse, with a pair of balances in 
his hand, as in the stinting times of scarcity, when the 
blighted earth has yielded but a partial increase, and every- 
thing has to be carefully measured and weighed ; finally 
comes a rider, on a pale or wan horse with death for its rider, 
and hell for its pursuivant, laying all waste around him by 
the most terrible instruments of destruction : all of them how 
unlike in character and opposite in working to the gentle 
Lamb of God, with his benignant scepter of love and peace ! 
They are so many emblems of the world's powers — natural, 
social, and political — turned against itself, preying upon its 
own bowels, and showing how little it is able to control the 
elements of evil, or to protect its votaries from the most re- 
peated and sweeping desolations. Its history, so long as the 
claims of Jesus were rejected, and the principles of his Gospel 
contravened, was to be marked by perpetual returns of war, 
famine, pestilence, and whatever is fraught with calamitous 
results to those who live only in the worldly sphere, and these 



404 THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF 

not coming as at random, but in consequence of men's sinful 
repudiation of the doctrine of the cross. On this account not 
only are the seals successively opened by the Lamb himself, 
as if sending those destructive forces forth upon their mission, 
but at the opening of each of them one of the four living creatures 
cried, Come, (epxov.) The voice was a call to the rider to pro- 
ceed on his errand, and was most fitly uttered in turn by those 
living creatures who, in their composite forms, represented 
the whole living creatm^ehood of earth, and pre-eminently 
man (whose structure predominated in their appearance) in 
his state of ideal perfection.* These, the highest representa- 
tives of the world and the nearest to the throne, call success- 
ively upon each of the powers symbolized by the riders to 
come and do the work assigned them : first, the right royal 
Rider with his kingdom of righteousness and peace and 
joy in the Holy Ghost, and then, because of the disregard and 
opposition manifested toward him, the riders who symbolized 
the disastrous influences of war, scarcity, tumult, and sweeping 
desolation. For the earth still is the Lord's, and it cannot be 
a theater of blessing, but must be ever and anon turning its 
powers and resources into instruments of chastisement against 
its inhabitants, while they refuse to do homage to its rightful 
Lord.f 

8. There are no more riders heralded by the call to come, 
for the four sufficiently represent all the powers that were to 
be in visible and active operation during the pending history. 
But the opening of* the fifth seal discloses another power, one 
not belonging to the visible sphere, and not regarded by the 
world, but still mighty and powerful, because entering the ear 
of God : the cry, namely, of his own elect — not the cry of 

* See "Typology of Scripture," vol. i, B. IT, c. 3. 

f The proper design and import of the call of the living creatures at the opening 
of the first four seals has been greatly obscured by the false reading, Come and 
see, {epxov koL (SXiire,) as if it had been a call to the Apocalyptist or others to 
behold what was going to appear. On the contrary, it is a call to the symbolical 
horse and rider, as is evident from the corresponding expression used in regard to 
the two first: "and he came forth," (k^^Xde,) as if in coming upon the stage he 
had but answered the previous caU. The correct reading is restored in the latest 
and best editions. 



THE CHUECH AND KINGDOM OF CHEIST. 406 

their prayers merely, but the cry of their blood, which had 
been shed for the word of God and for the testimony which 
they held. It discloses by implication rather than by direct 
discourse the history of the real Church in the world, the true 
followers of the Lamb, who, like him, are meek and suffering, 
using no weapons of violence, but simply holding by the word 
and testimony they had received from him, and for its sake 
loving not their lives unto the death. In such the Lamb and 
his cause had their proper representatives, and now the cry of 
their blood ascends to the highest heavens, and demands the 
recompense that was meet upon the world, which had so wick- 
edly shed it, a cry that must be heard by Him who loveth 
righteousness and hateth iniquity. It began indeed to be 
heard before it was finally answered, so that a period must 
elapse from the time it seemed to be listened to till the whole 
company of faithful witnesses and martyrs had completed 
their testimony, and the world's iniquity had become full. In 
other words, the same work of testifying and suffering for the 
truth of Jesus was to go on longer than the Church herself 
thought and expected it should, not, however, because the 
Lord was indifferent to the evil, but because the efficacious 
means of testifying and suffering must be plied till the divine 
forbearance with the world is exhausted, and the proper time 
of recompenses for evil has come. That time, however, must 
assuredly come ; and so, without anything further being indi- 
cated as to the operations of the Church, the next seal exhibits 
the cause of the Lamb triumphant, by the world giving way, 
as it were, beneath the feet of those who had hitherto held 
possession of it, all its foundations getting for them out of 
course, and filling them with overwhelming dread and dismay. 
They at length find the Lamb whom they had despised too 
mighty for them. But lest the members of the Church, being 
themselves in the world, and liable to share in its calamities, 
should also feel appalled by the prospect of such things going 
to come on the world, the episode in chap, vii of the sealing 
vision is introduced, which represents one hundred and forty- 
four thousand, a perfect number, symbol of a complete 
Church, as sealed for God, and thereafter glorified in the 



406 THE PEOPHETICAL FUTIJEE OF 

h-eavenlj places, and that before even the winds were allowed 
to blow npon the earth to hurt it ; not, therefore, pointing so 
mnch to the future as to the past, showing how even from the 
very commencement of the tribnlations which were to come 
on the world, and of which every seal bnt the first had only 
disclosed successive stages, the Lord had his eye on his own 
people, and would both keep them in perfect security, and 
conduct them to final bliss. It is impossible, we think, by 
any fair or natui'al intei'pretation of the scenes described to 
understand this seahng vision otherwise than of past and 
present times ; of what was to take place in reference to the 
troubles which had been long in progress, and were to reach 
their culmination during the sixth seal. By these unquestion- 
ably the earth was to be hurt, with all that naturally belonged 
to it, nay, brought to utter shame and confusion. And then 
the work on both sides being finished, the number of the elect 
being made up, and the resistance of an ungodly world effect- 
ually subverted and overthrown, the seventh seal discloses the 
state of thorough subjugation and repose that should ensue, 
all keeping silence before the Lord, as now everywhere ac- 
knowledged governor among the nations. 

As previously remarked, the representation in this first 
series is a general one ; the wonderful march of Providence 
and the prospective history of the world are exhibited only in 
their grand outlines : Christianity is there as a whole, the 
Church as a whole, and so also the world in its deeds of evil, 
its instruments of mischief, its judgment and doom. It must 
ever appear arbitrary to limit to single epochs or particular 
individuals what has pui-posely been left indefinite in these 
respects on the sacred page. 'Nov can it by any possibility be 
done so as to produce general confidence and satisfaction. 
For anything of a more special nature we must look to subse- 
quent revelations. 
\^ 9. The next series, by the very symbol employed to charac- 
terize it, the trumpet, bespeaks an active and stirring agency, 
for the trumpet was peculiarly the instrument of warlike 
preparation ; its loud shrill sound was the immediate call 
to battle, and employed here in connection with the great 



THE CHUECH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 407 

struggle which was to be carried on by the Lamb of God, as 
the head of the divine kingdom, with the powers and king- 
doms of this world, it must be regarded as the Lord's war- 
note, proclaiming successively that another and another in- 
strumentality was to be employed by him for the purpose of 
bringing the world under him. The things indicated, there- 
fore, by the trumpets should not have formally the character 
of judgments executed upon doomed and incorrigible offend- 
ers, who were reserved only unto wrath. They should rather 
be of the nature of mixed dealings ; on the one hand chastise- 
ments on account of sin, which should form so many calls on 
men to repentance, and on the other revelations of mercy to 
lead them from sin to salvation. It is by this combined two- 
fold instrumentality that the Lord always strives to overcome 
or in effect does overcome the obstinacy and wickedness of 
men. And when we look both to the beginning and to the close 
of the series, plain indications discover themselves that they 
were to be of the character and designed for the purpose now 
stated. They are preceded by the action of an angel at the 
golden altar offering much incense, (that is, carrying with it, 
embodying,) the prayers of all saints ; and the smoke of the 
incense with these prayers, it is said, ascended up before God 
out of the angel's hand. This denotes their acceptance with 
God ; they came up as a sweet memorial, which he could not 
fail to regard, and the actions that follow are the answer that 
he gives to them. But "the prayers of all saints" are the 
united cry of the Lord's people, his royal priesthood, not for 
the destruction, but for the salvation of the world ; for judg- 
ment, indeed, in so far as that might be necessary to hold in 
check the power of the adversary, and bring home to men's 
bosoms the knowledge and conviction of sin ; but still in the 
midst of this and through this for mercy that the way of peace 
and blessing may be found. Then when we look to the end 
we hear as the termination and result of the whole the joyful 
announcement pealed forth, " The kingdom of the world has 
become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ," a result 
which shows the gracious design that must have pervaded the 
entire series, and which could only have been readied by such 



408 THE PEOPHETICAL FUTURE OF 

a combination of severity and goodness as we have described. 
Bent on overcoming the world by subduing its sinfulness and 
bringing it into the obedience of his truth, the Lord comes 
forth as a man of war, the successive trumpet-notes herald the 
different means and agencies he employs in the conflict, and 
partly moved by fear, but partly also and much more drawn 
by the word of grace and truth, the hearts of men yield, and 
the field is at length won from the grasp of the enemy. 

Such appears to be the general character and aim of this, 
series of symbols, very fitly following on the former, as tending 
to show how the conquest more generally unfolded there was 
to be wrought out and brought to a successful issue. And a 
glance at the particulars confirms this view. The series is 
divided in the vision itself into a four and a three. The four 
so far stand by themselves and coincide with each other, that 
the things indicated by them are of the nature of infiictions on 
the outward territory of nature ; as a whole they travel the 
round of that territory, and tm-n it in all its departments into 
the occasion of trouble and calamity to those who cleave to it 
as their portion. First, the earth itself is visited, not by fertil- 
izing showers, but by hail and fire mingled with blood ; so that 
a third part of the trees and grass are burned up. Then the 
sea is to the same extent turned into blood by a burning moun- 
tain being cast into it ; whereby a third part of the creatures 
in it, and the vessels sailing on its bosom, were destroyed. 
IN^ext, the rivers and fountains of waters by the star Worm- 
wood are, to the extent also of a third, rendered so bitter that 
many died of them. Lastly, the higher region of nature is vis- 
ited, and again in a third part the sun, moon, and stars are so 
smitten, that for a third part of the time both by day and by 
night there was only darkness. All the departments of nature 
or rather what might correspond to these in the political and 
social sphere, were thus to be successively visited and rendered 
instruments of affliction and trouble. Yet still with a marked 
reserve, as if only for chastisement and warning ; in each case 
only the third part was affected, as a proof how loth God was 
to proceed to extremities; how he restrained even while he 
afflicted ; and by the very character of his rebukes discovered 



THE CHURCH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 409 

his unwillingness to destroy, Ms desire that men should repent 
and live. 

By such means, however, no effectual result is accomplished ; 
though the world is stricken in all its sources of natural suffi- 
ciency, multitudes still cling to it as a portion, and for its sake 
continue to disown Christ, and reject the Gospel of his salva- 
tion. Therefore, other and more effectual measures must be 
brought into operation ; and these are represented by the three 
last, the woe-trumpets, as they are called. It must be remem- 
bered, however, in what respect it is they are so called ; it is 
merely because of their power to bring to an end the beastly, 
groveling, God-opposing character of the world ; to pour con- 
fusion and ruin on the worldly interest, as such, that the inter- 
est of truth and righteousness might take its place. It is said, 
therefore, at the commencement of these trumpets, " Woe to the 
inhabiters of the earth," on account of them ; by the inhabit ers 
of the earth being meant those whose proper home and portion 
was there, such as entirely belonged to it, the earthly-minded, 
and hence aliens from that Church the true members of which 
have their names written in heaven, who are contemplated as 
ideally with the Lord in Zion. The woes to the persons de- 
scribed, therefore, were woes merely in respect to their earth! y- 
mindedness and devotion to the world ; but instruments and 
occasions of blessing, if they would but see in them the chasten- 
ing hand of God, and abandon the worse for the better part. 
"Now of the three woes, the first is described as the action of a 
fallen star — fallen from heaven to earth — emblem of a degen- 
erate power, an angel of light become one of darkness, and as 
such sent on the bad errand of opening the bottomless pit and 
letting out, amid the smoke of hell, a horde of scorpion-locusts, 
whose commision was not to touch the herbs and trees of the 
field, but to torment men, all such as had not the seal of God 
in their foreheads ; the men simply of the earth. These locusts, 
the direct emanation of the world of darkness, were also in 
their personal characteristics a strange compound of the beastly 
and the human, (shaped like horses, yet with faces like men, 
and crowned as if somehow destined to rule ;) of the soft and 
the savage, (the hair of women and the teeth of lions ;) of the 



410 THE PEOPHETICAL FUTUEE OF 

courageous and the vicious, (rustling as with chariots and breast- 
plates of iron, yet stinging as with tails of scorpions.) What 
an image of the emissaries of Satan, who sometimes with high 
pretensions and king-like authority, sometimes with winning 
gentleness and again with bold effrontery, teach the doctrines 
of devils ; doctrines which tend to make men the slaves of cor- 
ruption and lust to bind them up in strong delusion to believe 
a lie ; and so, in reality, amid all professions and appearances 
to the contrary, acting a beastly, savage and vicious part, and 
involving their followers in many sore and grievous troubles ! 
ApoUyon, the destroyer, is their king ; for it is his interests 
they serve, to the cruel bondage and manifold miseries of men. 
Though confined to no particular age, yet undoubtedly they 
had their most exact representation and their largest embodi- 
ment in those corrupters of the Christian doctrine who grad- 
ually brought on the murky atmosphere of the dark ages, and 
formed into shape the great apostasy which converted the new 
Jerusalem into Babylon, and entailed numberless evils upon 
Christendom. Hence, also, as having its grand impersonation 
in an apostate and degenerate Church, the work is ascribed to 
a fallen star. 

The next woe-trumpet, the sixth in the whole series, presents 
us with a phenomenon, in its earlier part, somewhat similar in 
kind, and in some respects even more threatening and formid- 
able than that which preceded. The scene here is laid in the 
Euphrates, which imphes that Babylon, which stood on the 
Euphrates and from which the Euphrates derives all its sym- 
bolical value and significance, has anew sprung into being. 
Euphrates by itself is nothing in Scripture, no more than any 
other river, excepting as " the great river " (here emphatically 
so called) on which Babylon stood, and which ministered so 
much to the wealth and security of the city ; it is hence so far 
identified with Babylon, as to share with it in symbolical appli- 
cations. This mention of Euphrates, also, and by implication 
of Babylon, confirms what has been said of the preceding sym- 
bol ; as it plainly betokens that corrupting infiuences had been 
at work, and had even formed a new Babylonish power. And 
now when the call is given under the sixth trumpet, to loose 



THE CHURCH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 411 

the ioiir angels that had been bound in the great river Eu- 
phrates, and when, as the result of this loosing, myriads of 
horsemen rush forth, and come with such destructive energy 
that the third part of men are represented as killed by them, a 
power must be indicated which as to its origin was very closely 
connected with the Babylon understood, was even one grand 
source of its strength and prosperity, but which now was to 
turn with prodigious force and destroying might against it. 
The very waters that nourished her were to become her plague 
and her destruction. And what these were we learn from 
chap, xvii, 15, " The waters which thou sawest, where the 
whore (Babylon) sitteth, are peoples, and multitudes, and na- 
tions, and tongues ;" in other words, the kingdoms of the world 
represented by the beast, on which the whore was seen sitting, 
because on their carnal power and influence she leaned for sup- 
port. So that this Euphrates host of warriors are instruments 
of mischief issuing, as it were, from her very bowels, from the 
ground of worldliness and corruption on which she stands, and 
making her the object of their hatred and rapacious violence.* 
It is the same thing substantially that is meant in chap, xvii, 16, 
by the kingdoms turning to hate the whore, so as " to make 
her desolate and naked, to eat her flesh and burn her with flre." 
And hence, as having such an origin, and working for such a 
purpose, the army here mentioned was of the most singular 
and anomalous description ; it is an army of horses rather than 
of horsemen, for the horses are said to have heads like lions, 
sending forth from their mouths fire, smoke, and brimstone, 
whereby the third part of men were killed ; and not only so, 
but tails also like serpents, with which they still further do 
hurt. In short, it is the devil's agents, turned by the judgment 
of heaven against the devil's own interest ; a beast-like instru- 
mentality, full only of rapacity and violence, Satanic guile and 
wickedness, assailing and subverting that which, though chiefly 
of Satan, had still too many elements in it of a better kind to 
suit the taste of the more outrageous and heaven-daring spirit 
that was to characterize the last times. It comprehends, there- 
fore, the ultimate proceedings both of the beast and of the false 

* See Appendix M. 



412 THE PEOPHETICAL FUTURE OF 

propHet ; the world's power and wisdora applied, as they in 
part have been and will y^t more fully be, with determined 
and ruthless vengeance to put away from them the corrupt and 
worldly religion, the Babylon that had usurped and lorded it 
over them.* And that such was the character of the party 
more especially to be visited by this unscrupulous and vengeful 
instrumentality, is rendered still more clear by the description 
given of the results, (ix, 20, 21,) "And the rest of the men 
which were not killed by these plagues, yet repented not of 
the works of their hands, that they should not worship devils, 
and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood, 
which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk ; neither repented 
they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their forni- 
cation, nor of their thefts." The sins of which they did not 
repent, and for which, therefore, the chastisement of heaven 
had been sent, formed just that kind of revived heathenism, 
that trafficking in the idolatry and abominations of the world, 
which, with the name of Christianity, constitute the Babylon 
of the Apocalypse. So that in this part of the sixth trumpet 
we manifestly have a representation of the severity to be 
employed in the latter days against the modern Babylon, for 
the purpose of chastising her guilt, and delivering the world 
from her abominations. And the severity was to be inflicted 
in its worst form by means of the worldly powers which it had 
been her policy to embrace and use for her o^vn carnal and 
selfish purposes. 

10. But this was not the only agency to be employed in con- 
nection with the sixth trumpet. Beside severity there was 
also to be mercy, as there was indeed a purpose of mercy run- 
ning through the whole of this series ; only now, when the 
final issues are approaching, it is more fully and distinctly 

* Hengstenberg thinks the angels must be good ones, most strangely ; for were 
ever good angels represented before as being tound ? Or did they ever head such a 
serpent-like and heUish agency? G-ood angels could only be understood, if they 
had been employed to keep back the agency till a certain time ; but this is not the 
idea; it is that they had been prepared to send it forth; and to do so "for the 
hour, and day, and month, and year." (So it should be read : it means that when 
the precise time should come for such a visitation, the proper agency should be 
found ready.) 



THE CHUECH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 413 

exhibited. It miglit have seemed from such a long and dread- 
ful succession of afflictive dealings as if severity and judgment 
alone were to prevail during this series of symbolical actions, 
precisely as during the former series it might have seemed, up 
till the sealing vision of the sixth seal, that the Lord's own 
people were to have no defence and security above others. 
Here, therefore, under the sixth trumpet, as there under the 
sixth seal, a long, and precious episode is introduced, which 
should have formed, as in the other case, a separate chapter, 
but which is thrown into chap, x and xi, 1-13. Like the seal- 
ing vision, it is of a regressive as well as prospective character, 
and is intended to exhibit the better agency which all along 
had been in operation in connection with the severer measures 
employed, and which was necessary to carry out the design of 
these by leading men to repentance. The one was like the 
Law, intended, by its awful utterances and deadly wounds, to 
penetrate with a humbling sense of guilt and danger, while 
the other, the Gospel, with its gentle and persuasive voice, 
entreated men to arise and flee from the wrath to come. Tlie 
representation of this better agency is introduced by the ap- 
pearance of a mighty angel, (who, by what follows, can be 
understood to be no other than Christ,) with a cloud and rain- 
bow about his head, the symbol of mercy after judgment, indi- 
cating that, nothwithstanding the floods of wrath which he 
had been making to pass over the world, he still had a pur- 
pose of grace, and that his design was not to destroy but to 
save. His whole appearance and manner denote great de- 
termination of purpose and irresistible might in carrying his 
design into execution. To show what the design was he 
plants his right foot upon the sea, and his left upon the earth, 
to indicate his sovereign right in respect to both, and his firm 
resolve to put that right into execution. He further, by a 
solemn oath, declares that, viewed in respect to the stage of 
operations marked by the sixth trumpet, no more delay should 
take place in having the whole carried into execution. He 
swore that " time should no longer be, (that is, there should be 
no further delay,) but in the days of the voice of the seventh 
angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God 



414 



THE PEOPHETICAL FUTTEE OF 



shonld be finished." And then follows the instramentality 
more especiallv to be employed for the accomplishment of the 
intended result. This is the little book given to John, to eat, 
a symbolical action to denote that the contents of that book 
must be received into the heart and sonl of those whom John 
represented, the confessors and witnesses of the trnth. as only 
by being so received on their part, and then proclaimed before 
'* peoples, and nations, and tongnes. and kings.** conld the endJ 
in view be attained. The book is called little much for the" 
same reason that faith, even in its mightiest operations, is 
compared to a grain of mustard-seed, because it is small and 
insignificant in the estimation of the world and in the eve of 
sense as compared with the gigantic and obtrusive forces it 
has to contend with, and the vast results it must achieve. It 
is simply the G-ospel of the grace of God which becomes, in 
respect to those who cordially embrace and own it. the word 
of their testimony. This is the one grand weapon of the 
Lamb, the sword that goeth out of his mouth to bring the 
people under him. or else consign them to destruction as 
finally impenitent. This, believingly received, and confessed 
and handled by a faithful Church, is the chosen instrument- 
alitv bv which the tide of evil in the world is to be turned, 
and the inheritance rescued from the power of the adversary. 
After the brief indication of the weapon and the instrument- 
ality comes the vision of the measurement of the temple, and 
the history of the ^vitnesses, retrospectively connecting the 
past with the present, showing how the character of God's 
temple or Church had been outwardly transformed ; how that 
which apparently was such and had become dominant was 
really the reverse, an essentially heathen or worldly party 
under a godly name and profession ; how this spiritual Egypt, 
or Babylon, had sought to corrupt the truth, and trample 
under foot those that believed and proclaimed it ; how they 
had even for a time utterly suppressed the open testimony of 
the faithful, and violently made away with them ; but how 
the Lord, not with standins, stood bv his servants, o:ave testi- 
monv to the word of his srrace, and at last rendered it so 
mighty and powerful that the respective parties altogether 



THE CHUECH AKD KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 415 

changed places, the faithful witnesses being exalted to heaven, 
the place of power and influence, while the proud and perse- 
cuting city (Babylon,) falls as by an earthquake, multitudes of 
her people are slain, and the rest are affrighted and give glory 
to the God of heaven. We only indicate here the train of 
thought, as the subject has been formally discussed in the pre- 
ceding section. But it should be noted how different the 
result now is from what it was at the close of the more 
judicial parts of the process. By these many were left who 
did not repent of their sins and evil deeds, (chap, ix, 20, 21 ;) 
but now that the instrumentality of life and blessing is 
brought distinctly into view the work of repentance is accom- 
plished, the terror produced by the severer measures disposes 
men to embrace the mercy offered in the Gospel, and em- 
bodied in the testimony of the witnesses ; the remnant, even 
in Babylon, believe and are saved. And then comes the end ; 
not indeed without many heavings and agitations, convulsions 
of various kinds, caused by the truth of God rising to the 
ascendant ; but still it comes ; and when the seventh trumpet 
sounds amid these complicated disturbances, it is only that 
the joyful announcement may be proclaimed, " The kingdom 
of the world has become the kingdom (so it should be read) of 
our Lord and of his Christ ; and he shall reign for ever and 
ever." 

Thus it appears that the series of the trumpets constitute a 
clear and decided advance upon that of the seals. They ex- 
hibit the train of causes and effects by which the marvelous 
results unfolded in the seals were to be brought about ; the 
twofold kind of agencies by which the Lamb and his followers 
should at length come to change places with the world, 
namely, the rod of chastisement and the word of reconcilia- 
tion ; afflictive providences and retributory judgments on the 
one hand, and on the other the Gospel of salvation, unflinch- 
ingly and perseveringly proclaimed by a chosen band of wit- 
nesses till it should become everywhere triumphant. In this 
way the cause that went forth at the first to conquer does 
conquer, and secures for itself a universal dominion. But one 
point still remains to be cleared. It has come out in the 



416 THE PEOPHETICAL FUTUEE OF 

course of this last series that in the work of conquest to be^ 
achieved it was not simply the world in its original and 
palpably heathenish form which had to be brought into sub- 
jection. A professedly religious, though really intensely 
worldly and antichristian domination, had come into the field, 
and indeed so extensively occupied at last that field, that it is 
with this latterly the struggle appeared to be more especially 
conducted. Whence then this extraordinary change ? How 
did such a worldly Christianity rise into being, and what pre- 
cise measures were to be adopted in respect to it ? 

11. !N"ow it is chiefly to provide an answer to these questions, 
which most naturally present themselves, that the visions 
reaching from the close of chap, xi to that of chap, xix, eight 
whole chapters, have been introduced. This portion occupies 
so large a space because it more directly concerned the 
Church's dangers and difficulties, and was required to put her 
fully on her guard against the coming evil, or to leave her 
inexcusable if she became involved in it. Like the visions 
already noticed, it embraces an extensive range, and as we have 
previously had occasion to show, points back to the past, as 
well as onward to the future, in order to show how the evil 
originally sprung up, and how it was to develop itself till it 
reached the gigantic magnitude and formidable character it 
ultimately assumed. This is done more particularly in chap- 
ters xii and xiii, where the matter is represented in connection 
both with the personal spite and malice of the tempter, on 
account of the victory gained over him by Christ ; and with 
the beast or worldly power, in its varied forms and manifesta- 
tions, more especially in the times following the general spread 
of Christianity, after the deadly wound caused by this Gospel 
had again been healed. Out of the healing of the wound came 
Babylon, which consists of an unnatural conjunction of the 
Church and the world, the Church having thereby become 
essentially antichristian ; and because of the greatness of the 
guilt and the heaviness of the doom incurred by such a degen- 
eracy it has a very large and prominent place given to it in 
the prophecy. In chap, xiii we are told how the introduction 
of Christianity led the worldly power to assume a form corre- 



THE CHURCH AND KINGDOM OF CHEIST. 417 

spending to the altered state of affairs ; and the success follow- 
ing its altered pol.3j implied that the Church, to a large 
extent, had sacrificed its character, and joined hands with the 
world. Accordingly, in the next chapter, chap, xiv, the true 
Church, as contradistinguished from the false, is brought prom- 
inently into view. The apostle sees an elect and faithful com- 
pany with the Lamb on Mount Zion ; while he hears, and for 
the first time hears the name of Babylon proclaimed as the 
object of divine wrath, and as destined to fall by the preaching 
of the everlasting Gospel, (verses 6-8.) At the same time, to 
show the essential agreement of the power designated Babylon 
with that previously represented by the beast and his image, 
the wrath of God is also proclaimed (verses 9-11) against all 
who receive the mark of the beast and worship his image ; that 
is, against all who surrender themselves to the lusts and inter- 
ests of a present evil world, though they may gild it over by a 
Christian name. For all such, it is declared, the fiery indigna- 
tion and final judgments of God are reserved ; while, in marked 
contrast, is brought out (verses 12 and 13) the safe and ever- 
lastingly blessed condition of those who, crucifying the flesh 
through the Spirit, renouncing the world for the better part, 
keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus. Then 
follow an entire series of visions, each containing representa- 
tions of God's judicial proceedings and closing acts toward 
those adherents of earthliness and sin. The first is a quite 
general one, (chap, xiv, 14-20,) and appears under the image 
of a vine to be reaped and trodden, an image similarly used in 
Old Testament prophecy, (Isa. Ixiii.) It is called the vine " of 
the earth ;" earth's own spontaneous production ; and so a fit- 
ting representation of those who had nothing about them savor- 
ing of a higher world, but were the slaves of sense and time. 
1^0 distinction, therefore, is here made between one class of 
doomed sinners and another ; they are considered in the mass ; 
and being, without distinction, lovers of a corrupt and perish- 
ing world, they are regarded as growing together till they 
become ripe for judgment, when they receive the heritage of a 
common destruction. 

12. The next series, however, is of a more specific kind ; it con- 

27 



418 THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF 

sists of the seven vials ; and has somewhat of the same relation 
to the trumpets that the trumpets had to the seals. The trum- 
pets, as we have shown, disclose God's dealings with the world 
in order to brmg it to repentance and the faith of Christ ; they 
are, therefore, of a mixed character, and partake alike of chas- 
tisement and mercy. But the world is here contemplated sim- 
ply in its guilt ; not its natural guilt merely, but that far 
deeper and more aggravated guilt which it had incurred by 
rejecting the salvation of Christ, and even turning his scheme 
of grace and truth into a huge Babel of falsehood and corrup- 
tion. The dealings here, therefore, are strictly judicial ; they 
bring out the severe aspect of God's character, and end only 
with the utter destruction of the party against which they are 
directed. That party, precisely as in the case of the trumpets, 
is the sinful world at large, but viewed with a more especial 
reference to its condition after the introduction and general 
spread of Christianity, and still more after the formation of the 
Babylonish counterfeit. Hence the general subject being the 
same as in the case of the trumpets, though contemplated and 
dealt with under a somewhat different aspect, the one series 
runs uniformly alongside the other, and does not so properly 
represent a diverse and separate order of things, as the dark, 
the judicial, the simply punitive character and operation of the 
same things. 

In accordance with this character and design, the distinctive 
symbol here used is that of the vial, a round cup or goblet, into 
which ingredients of a deleterious kind are supposed to be put, 
that they might be poured out upon the subjects of vengeance. 
The action of pouring out in this sense, and sometimes also with 
the mention of a cup from which the contents were to be poured, 
is frequently used in Old Testament prophecy, (Psalm Ixxv, 8, 
Ixxix, 6 ; Jer. x, 25, etc. ;) it denotes the full, resistless, over- 
whelming energy with wliich the visitation of evil should come. 
The vials here are hence called vials, " full of the wrath of 
God ;" and are represented as belonging to the seven angels 
who have " the seven last plagues ; for in them is filled up the 
wrath of God:" not that the things here represented were 
absolutely posterior to all that had gone before, but that they 



THE CHURCH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 419 

belonged to the procedure of God in its terminal processes of 
judgment upon the guilty world ; processes that should not run 
out till the worldly, God-opposing interest of the adversary was 
effectually put down, and all its adherents were scattered to 
the winds. As being the last actions of this description, God's 
judicial proceedings against the worldly power in its ultimate 
forms of manifestation, the heavenly inhabitants are represented 
as singing in contemplation of them, " the song of Moses and 
the Lamb," coupling together the victory to be won over the 
last, with that won over the first great embodiment of the anti- 
righteous worldly power ; spanning in their notes of triumph 
the whole field of struggle and conquest. And finally, the 
work of judgment to be executed is represented as emphatically 
a work of holiness,' by the seven angels appearing to come out 
of " the temple of the tabernacle of the testimony ;" that is, 
out of the temple which contained the tabernacle of the testi- 
mony ; in other words, they came forth as representatives of 
that holy law of God, which was called the testimony of the 
tabernacle, because it testified against all unrighteousness of 
men, and called for divine judgment against it. 

Looking now individually at the vials, the first four have 
formally the same immediate objects, and perform exactly the 
same round as the trumpets : first the earth is smitten, then the 
sea, then the rivers and fountains of waters, and last of all the 
sun. There is this difference, however, that here, in accord- 
ance with the strictly penal character of the series, the effects 
appear more extensively and directly hurtful, and are also 
more explicitly connected with the sins which called them 
forth. Instead of only the third part of the objects immedi- 
ately affected being mentioned, it is the effect upon men them- 
selves which is brought specially into notice, whose sin and 
punishment are expressly linked together. In the first case, a 
grievous and noisome sore falls upon the men who have the 
mark of the beast and worship his image ; in the second, the 
sea becomes blood, and every soul in it dies ; in the third, when 
the rivers and fountains have been made blood, the Lord is 
praised as righteous in his judgments, because he had given 
those blood to drink who had shed the blood of his saints ; and 



4:20 THE PEOPHETICAL FUTUEE OF 

in the fourth., power was given the sun to scorch men with fire 
on account, as is plainly implied, of their still daring and grow- 
ing wickedness, which was such that they even blasphemed 
his name while suffering under the direful visitation. It is 
manifestly impossible to understand such things literally ; they 
never could be meant to be so taken. But the general sense ia 
obvious ; the men whose souls clave to the dust, who in spite 
of all that the Lord had done to reclaim them to himself con- 
tinued to reject or corrupt his truth that they might live on 
in conformity to the flesh of the world, should find the whole 
circle of worldly powers and influences, so far from keeping a 
covenant of peace with them, often turned into instruments of 
evil : so that from the world in its more settled state (the 
earth) distressing sores should come upon them ; from its heav- 
ing agitations and troubles (the sea) violence and bloodshed ; 
even from its more refreshing and gladdening influences (the 
streams and the sun) tormenting and pestiferous effects which 
they should be powerless to resist. Such things ever and anon 
occurring, and as might be supposed at certain periods occur- 
ring in more marked and dreadful visitations, would tell how 
far the world, in its antichristian and ungodly portion, was 
from having gained by its contrariety to God ; how little it 
could do to avert the deadliest evils from its followers ; and 
how much it lay under the frown and chastisement of an angry 
God. The vexations and disorders coming on it while under 
antichristian rule, and on this very account coming on it, must 
be ever rendering it a valley of Achor to those who perversely 
cling ta and worship it. 

13^. These, however, are only the more general forms of 
divine judgment, (though, if the world perseveres in guilt and 
high-minded opposition to the truth, it is by no means im- 
probable they may find more specific and marked exemplifica- 
tions than have yet been given to them ;) the more peculiar 
and decisive ones are exhibited in the three last vials. The 
fifth was poured upon the seat of the beast, which (as before 
observed under the fifth trumpet) is all one with the bottom- 
less pit. It is not said here what came forth from it, for that 
had been fully described under the fifth trumpet ; but as the 



THE CHURCH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 421 

result of the smoke and tlie scorpion-locusts whicli issued 
forth, the kingdom of the beast, it is said, was filled with 
darkness, and men gnawed their tongues for pain, and went 
on blaspheming the God of heaven : involved in darkness and 
misery, and yet cleaving to their idols and abominations ! in 
their stricken and miserable condition manifestly lying under 
the rebuke of God, and yet continuing in the things which 
dishonored and provoked him ! Of this the comfortless, ig- 
norant, deluded, and enslaved state of papal kingdoms gen- 
erally during the night of the dark ages formed the most 
extensive and striking exemplification. The next vial is 
poured upon the great river Euphrates, and the result is that 
the water thereof is dried up that the way of the kings of the 
East might be prepared. The waters of the Euphrates, as 
already noticed, were the source of Babylon's riches and 
security ; she relied on these to the last when the judgment 
of heaven was overhanging her, fatally relied on them, for by 
diverting their course, and drying up their wonted channel, 
the Modes and Persians entered and took possession of the 
city. These Modes and Persians were actually the kings of 
the East, coming, as they did, from the country east of Baby- 
lon, and coming with such royal might and plenitude of 
resources that the proud mistress of the nations fell an easy 
prey into their hands. Here, however, the epithet, " kings of 
the East," precisely as Euphrates and Babylon, is used sym- 
bolically to denote powers and influences of a kind that, in 
their relation to the mystical Babylon, should correspond with 
those of the Modes and Persians to the literal. They are 
none other than the dreadful Satanic agency, symbolized 
under the sixth trumpet by the myriads of horsemen, whose 
horses had tails like serpents, and sent forth fire, smoke, and 
brimstone from their mouths. Another, but not less appalling 
representation is given of them here under the " three unclean 
spirits like frogs," which the prophet saw coming " out of the 
mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and 
out of the mouth of the false prophet." They are further 
described as " the spirits of devils (demons) working miracles, 
which go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole 



422 THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF 

world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God 
Almighty." The description here, as well as in the parallel 
passage, points to the last, the most reckless antichristian 
and blasphemous manifestations of the beast and the false 
prophet, when impregnated to the full with the spirit of Satan, 
and acting as his agents in the final effort he makes against 
the kingdom of God. It is on this account that the evil 
spirits, likened to frogs from their low, unclean, and loath- 
some character, appear as coming out of the mouth, first of all 
of the dragon, being, so to speak, direct emanations of the 
prince of darkness, and ready to give vent to his foul blas- 
phemies and intense malice against the truth. They proceed 
also from the mouths of the beast and the false prophet, 
because the power and wisdom of the world supply the 'im- 
mediate instruments — the wonder-working skill, the lofty 
achievements in art and science, the daring speculations, 
lawless doctrines, resolute energy and might — ^by which the 
work is to be carried forward. Babylon, or the corrupt and 
apostate Church, is not mentioned as having directly to do 
with the issuing forth of these moral plagues ; for they belong 
to a stage beyond hers, and are to have their great use in 
tearing up her foundations and overthrowing her confidences. 
It is through this agency of evil that the kingdoms come to 
hate the whore, or, in the symbolical language of this vision, 
that the waters of the great river Euphrates (the multitudes 
and peoples) on which Babylon sat, and to which she looked 
for her security and strength, are dried up, nay, are made to 
send forth against her hosts of adverse forces, which shall do 
to her substanfially what the kings of the East, the Modes 
and Persians, Babylon's own tributaries, did to the ancient 
city. Had these relations been perceived, and the real charac- 
ter of the conflict been understood, there would have been 
little difficulty in understanding the remaining feature in the 
description, in which it is said that the conflicting hosts were 
to be gathered together for a final decision in a place called in 
the Hebrew tongue Armageddon. It is another allusion to 
the history and relations of Old Testament times, and indi- 
cates that the old was virtually to return again. Armaged- 



THE CHURCH AJSTD KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 423 

don is simply the hill of Megiddo, and in sacred history the 
neighborhood of Megiddo is celebrated for a very memorable 
and mournful event, the overthrow of Josiah's army, and his 
own death by the host of Egypt, (2 Kings xxiii, 29, 30 ;) the 
discomfiture of the professing Church of God by the profane 
worldly power. The reason w^as, that though Josiah was a 
good man, the Church itself had become a Babylon ; corrup- 
tion of every kind continued to nestle in it ; the prophets were 
at the time uttering in the strongest terms their denunciations 
and threatenings against it ; and not only was the step taken 
by Josiah a false one, betokening too superficial views of the 
evil within and the difficulties to be contended against with- 
out, but the event proved that the world was now the stronger 
paVty, and was used as God's instrument to rebuke a corrupt 
Church, and warn her of her approaching downfall. There^ 
therefore, was the type of the mighty and portentous future 
now under consideration : the great battle of Armageddon is 
to be on the grand scale what the old battle of Megiddo was 
on the small one : the world, as animated by the spirit of 
darkness, is to rise up with such fresh might, and to bring 
into the field such potent and effective instruments of its own, 
that the false Church shall be unable any longer to control, or 
even to cope with it : Babylon shall be worsted. Hence the 
propriety and importance of the call in verse 15, uttered im- 
mediately before the final conflict : " Behold, I come as a 
thief. Blessed is he that watcheth, and keepethhis garments, 
lest he walk naked, and they see his shame." It virtually 
points to the case of Josiah, and warns against its imitation in 
the future. The corrupt and antichristian Church Tnust go 
down, the world shall prevail against it. Let all, therefore, 
who would be found on the Lord's side, and avoid a shameful 
exposure, take heed how they have to do with it ; let them see 
that they occupy the right position, and stand only in the 
truth and purity of the Gospel. 

Thus the whole of this part of the vision receives a quite 
natural explanation ; the peculiar references to ancient history 
couched under the terms " Euphrates," " kings of the East," 
and " Armageddon," are found to be most appropriately and 



424: THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OP 

constantly applied, and the numberless arbitrary and far- 
fetched interpretations which have been employed regarding 
them are no longer needed. ^^ All then is seen in the action of 
this vial approaching to the final consummation ; the last 
forms of ungodliness are in full operation, and the false 
Church is vainly struggling against them ; her old ground is 
sinking under her feet. And then with the pouring forth of 
the seventh vial the closing stage commences : the controversy 
both in respect to the false Church and the world is brought 
to an ultimate decision, and first on the one then on the other 
the desolating judgment of heaven alights. This last vial is 
represented as being poured into the air : not from any real or 
supposed connection between the air and evil spirits, but with 
reference to the air as the region on which the earth imme- 
diately depends, the region from which in peaceful times 
descend the genial and blissful infiuences of nature, but the 
region also when things are out of course which is charged with 
the deadliest elements, and gives birth to the most desolating 
effects. Hence voices, thunders, lightnings, and a great earth- 
quake are the immediate results which follow the pouring out 

* It is unnecessary to refer particularly to these interpretations. Among the most 
current are those which take Euphrates as a name for the Turkish empire, " kings 
of the East" for the Jews, and Armageddon for some great political struggle in 
the Levant, (latterly, the Crimea,) or in Italy : all merely external and political 
afifairs, which are foreign to the great theme of the Apocalypse. Euphrates, too, 
taken literally in the midst of the symbols, and kings of the East coined for the 
occasion as an epithet of the Jews. Such confusion and arbitrariness need no 
refutation ; it is our reproach that interpretations embodying them should ever 
have been propounded. Less fanciful, in regard to Megiddo, but far from satisfac- 
tory, is the explanation offered by Mr. Stanley in his recent volume on Sinai and 
Palestine, p. 330, where, on account of the natural position of Megiddo, as forming 
a convenient and suitable arena for conflicts between the people of Palestine and 
the surrounding nations, it is supposed to have been selected " as the battle-field 
of the world, and passed, through its adoption into the language of the Apocalypse, 
into a universal proverb." It is possible enough many battles may have been 
fought on Megiddo, or in its immediate neighborhood; but there is only one re- 
corded that had any peculiar moral bearing on the affairs of the old covenant, 
the one, namely, in which Josiah fell before the might of Egypt. And as it is the 
moral, not simply the natural aspect of things on which the use of such historical 
circumstances in the Apocalj^pse proceeds, we should have no hesitation how to 
explain the allusion before us. It is only by viewing the matter in the hght we 
have presented ic that the precise place also as well as the nature of the allusion 
can be understood. 



THE CHUKCH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST, 4:25 

of this vial : all of tliem belonging to tlie region of tlie air, 
and the symbols of the mightiest changes and fearful catastro- 
phes in the moral world. They indicate that the judgments 
of God upon the ungodliness of the world and the apostasy of 
the Church have at length run their course ; '' it is done " 
respecting these forms of evil ; the cities of the nations fall, 
that is, they are destroyed in their character as strongholds of 
error and wickedness, and great Babylon comes in remem- 
brance before God to give to her the cup of the wine of the 
fierceness of his vn-ath. All, in short, undergoes a revolution, 
and the antichristian spirit, which had so long wrought in the 
world, and so deeply rooted itself in the kingdoms of the 
earth, is judged and cast out. 

14. After this comes another and more specific series, repre- 
senting the guilt and doom of Babylon by itself, contained in 
chap, xvii, xviii. The remarkable prominence given to this 
subject shows the singular place it held in the mind of God 
as deserving of his special reprobation. Babylon in many re- 
spects stood alone in guilt. Instead of correcting and reform- 
ing the world, the false Church had fallen in with its corrup- 
tions and lent the name of God to these for her own temporal 
aggrandizement. It was meet, therefore, that her shame 
should be fully exposed, and her overthrow portrayed with 
the greatest fullness of detail and vividness of coloring. But 
as this part of the vision has been exhibited in the preceding 
section there is no need to enlarge on it here. 

15. The same also may be said of the last and concluding 
series of this portion of the book, that which occupies the 
greater part of chap. xix. We have there a revelation of the 
final dealings with the kingdoms of the earth. The series of 
the vials which has to do merely with judgments leaves a por- 
tion of the history untold. While God's work upon Babylon, 
and his work also upon the beast and the false prophet, that 
is, the world viewed in respect to its ungodliness and corrup- 
tion, comes to a close with the destruction of the evil, it is 
otherwise with the kingdoms of the world viewed in respect 
to their inhabitants. These, as already exhibited in the series 
of the trumpets, are to be transferred to the dominion of 



426 THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF 

Christ. And so, to wind properly up this part of the marvel- 
ous history, a representation is given of the conquest of the 
kingdoms to Christ, which, like all his conquests over the 
hearts and consciences of men, is accomplished by the power 
of the truth, wielded by a faithful Church, and rendered effi- 
cacious by the power of his Spirit. External troubles and 
social evils no doubt contribute to the result, but it is still the 
shai'p sword of the word and the spiritual energy and faithful- 
ness of the Church by which all is more immediately effected. 
Thus the spirit of error and iniquity which had corrupted and 
destroyed the world is put down ; the beast and the false 
prophet, as well as Babylon, are cast into outer darkness, and 
the saints with their divine head possess the kingdom, and 
enjoy together a reign of millennial blessedness and glory. 

16. It remains only to notice the indications of time con- 
tained in the portion of the Apocalypse we have been survey- 
ing. These appear to be simply three, though one of them is 
expressed in a threefold manner. It is the period of the 
Church's tried and oppressed condition, denoted first in chap, 
xi, 2, as a period of forty-two months, during which " the holy 
city is trodden down of the Gentiles," during which also the 
beast was to continue in its power to blaspheme and injure, 
(chap, xiii, 5 ;) then as consisting of one thousand two hund- 
red and sixty days (forty-two months multiplied by thirty 
days) during which the witnesses, representatives of a faithful 
but persecuted Church, were to prophesy, chap, xi, 3, and the 
Church was to abide in the wilderness, chap, xii, 6, having a 
place and food prepared for her by God; and finally as a time, 
times and a half (corresponding to one year of twelve months, 
two of the same, and a half year of six, or to forty-two months, 
or again to one thousand two hundred and sixty days,) during 
which the Church was to remain and be fed in the wilderness, 
chap, xii, 14. In Dan. vii, 25, where the expression first 
occurs, it is the time during which the saints of God were to 
be given into the hand of the power that was to speak great 
words against the Most High. These are manifestly but dif- 
ferent modes of expressing one and the same period, as the 
state of things also to which they are applied is substantially 



THE CHURCH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 427 

identical, though yariously represented. For the sojonm in 
the wilderness on the part of the faithful and proper spouse, 
the treading down of the holy city by those who belonged 
cnly to the court of the Gentiles, and the testifying for the 
truth of God by a faithful remnant clothed in sackcloth, and 
wrestling against error and corruption ; these are obviously 
but different symbolical representations of the same abnormal 
and dislocated state of things. The other two periods men- 
tioned are both very brief as compared with the one just 
noticed. The shortest is that during which the bodies of the 
faithful witnesses are represented as lying dead, though un- 
buried, three and a half days, chap, xi, 12 ; and the other is 
the five months during which the scorpion-locusts were to 
have power to torment the followers of the beast, chap, ix, 5. 

1^0 w it is scarcely possible to avoid being struck even on the 
most cursory inspection of these periods with a peculiarity 
that is common to them all — the broken and incomplete 
aspect they present. A certain whole was evidently in 
respect to each of them in the mind of the Divine Author of 
the vision, as that toward which the parties spoken of were 
aiming, but were arrested midway in their career. This is 
particularly observable in the largest and by much the most 
important number, which in every form, whether as time, 
times, and a half, or as the months and days that make up 
three and a half years, is most expressive of an unfinished 
course, a period somehow cut off in the middle. In like man- 
ner the three and a half days of rejoicing over the unburied 
corpses of the slain witnesses betokens the same violent and 
abrupt termination of the course indicated ; in their ungodly 
triumph the adversaries could not complete more than half of 
one of the briefest revolutions of time, one of the smallest 
cycles of the whole period allotted to the ascendency of evil. 
The incompleteness may appear less palpable in the five 
months specified for the plague of scorpion- locusts ; but it will 
scarcely do so to those who have attended to the use made in 
Scripture of ten with reference to certain kinds of totality. 
The five is simply the broken ten. 

So marked a peculiarity in the use of all these numbers is 



428 THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF 

itself a strong presumption in favor of tlieir symbolical import. 
It seems to stamp tlieir value as indications of relative rather 
than of absolute periods of duration, relative both as regards 
each other, and also as regards an ideal whole. And it will 
appear to do so the more convincingly the more the periods 
are viewed in reference to the parties mentioned, which are 
the entire spiritual Church throughout the world on the one 
side, and the whole antichristian power on the other ; for in 
regard to such vast bodies and their wide-reaching interests 
wh^t could such periods avail in their natural sense ! They 
could obviously afford but a mere fraction of the time neces- 
sary for the accomplishment of the results connected with 
them, nor could such results in actual history be shut up into 
any periods consisting of such exact and definite measures. 
Another and very powerful consideration in favor of the same 
view is the place of these historical numbers, surrounded on 
every hand not with the literal, but with the symbolical. The 
woman that is persecuted, and the dragon who persecutes ; 
the wilderness into which she flees, and the floods sent after 
her ; the beast that rages against the truth, and the two wit- 
nesses who testify for it to the death ; the holy city that is 
trodden down, and the Egypt or Babylon by whom the tread- 
ing is effected ; all are symbolically used, and shall the periods 
of working be otherwise than symbolical ? In that case there 
would be the violation of one of the plainest laws of symboli- 
cal writing, and confusion and arbitrariness as a matter of 
necessity would be brought into the interpretation."^ It is 
true, the number seven, as applied to the heads of the beast, 
and the number ten spoken of its ultimate forms of separate 
organization, have already been found by us to possess a kind 
of historical verification. But this, when more closely consid- 
ered, manifests an evident striving after the symbolical. For 
it is to make out the number seven that St. John diverges so 
strikingly here from the representation of Daniel, taking in 
the two earlier worldly kingdoms which Daniel had omitted, 
and making of the divided state of Daniel's fourth empire a 
separate kingdom, the seventh. Nay, even this seventh he 

* See Part I., chap, v, sec. 4. 



THE CHURCH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 429 

calls in a sense also the eiglitli, chap, xvii, 11, although seven 
still is taken as the proper number, because it alone has the 
proper symbolical import. The beast comes into view mainly 
as the rival of God, and seven being the common symbol of 
completeness for the divine manifestations in the world, (Isa. 
XXX, 26 ; Zech. iii, 9 ; iv, 2 ; Prov. ix, 1 ; Rev. i, 4 ; iii, 1 , 
etc.,) originating, no doubt, in the sevenfold acts of God at 
creation, the worldly rival of God's power and glory in the 
world is, in token of its God-defying character, presented 
under the same number of manifestations.* For a like reason 
the divided state of the last manifestation is distributed into 
the number ten. This also is often used as a symbol of com- 
pleteness, on which account the ancients called it the perfect 
number, which comprehends all others in itself. But it com- 
monly denotes completeness in respect to human interests and 
relations, as in the tithes or tenths, (ten being regarded as 
comprising the entire property, from which one was selected 
to do homage to him who gave the whole,) and the ten com- 
mandments, the sum of man's dutiful obedience. When, 
therefore, the divided state into which the modern Roman 
world fell is represented under ten horns or kingdoms, it may 
well be doubted whether this should be pressed further than 
as indicating by a round number the totality of the new states, 
the diversity in the nnity, whether or not it might admit of 
being exactly and definitely applied to so many historical 
kingdoms. There is always some difficulty in making out an 

* It is perhaps by a silent reference to this that we should explain the enig- 
matical passage in chap, xiii, 18, respecting the name of the beast: "Here is 
wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast : for it 
is a man's number ; and the number is six hundred threescore and six." The name 
must be taken here (as usual in Scripture) as the indication of the nature. Now, 
though the beast had been allowed to assume a sevenfold manifestation, as a kind 
of assumption and parody of the divine, and though in the latter stages of its ex- 
istence its lamb-horned ally was to do much to work it into a resemblance of the 
divine, yet as regards the realities of things, it could never reach what it aspired 
after, it could not attain to any development beyond the human, though it should 
have this in its higher form. Not the seven, therefore, the symbol of divine full- 
ness and perfection, but only the six highly potentialized ; this six three times 
repeated is the utmost that could be assigned him for a symbolical indication of 
his nature ; this is the number of his name. It is but a man's name still, not 
God's. 



4:30 THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF 

exact correspondence, and we should the less hold such a cor- 
respondence to be necessary, since even in the case of the 
tribes of Israel, when taken to represent the company of an 
elect people, (chap, vii,) one tribe is totally omitted to preserve 
the symbolism of the historical twelve. This shows very 
strikingly the stress laid on the symbolical element, and 
strengthens the conclusion that both in the seven and ten, as 
applied to the beast, and in the broken periods now under 
consideration, that element is primarily respected. Lastly, 
there is to be added on the same side the obviously loose set- 
ting of the periods ; neither their starting-point nor their ter- 
mination is sharply defined. Viewed historically, indeed, one 
does not see how it could have been otherwise. The flight of 
the Church into the wilderness, or the treading down of the 
holy city by the Gentiles, came on gradually, and appeared in 
different places at different times. It cannot be linked to 
definite historical epochs, as if at one or other of these it com- 
menced for the first time and for the whole Church, and from 
the very nature of things the termination must have a like 
diversity and gradation in its accomplishment. This draws a 
plain line of demarcation between the periods before us and 
Daniel's seventy weeks, which are definitely bounded both in 
respect to their commencement and their close. The nar- 
rower field and more outward character of the things they 
referred to easily admitted of such a limitation ; but here the 
world is the field, and the cause of vital Christianity through- 
out its borders the great interest at stake.* 

Giving all these considerations their due weight, we cannot 
avoid arriving at the conclusion that the periods mentioned, in 
accordance with the general character of the book, are to be 
chiefly, if not exclusively, understood in a symbolical manner, 
as serving to indicate the times of relative length or brevity 
which the operations described were destined to occupy. If 

* I have deemed it nedless to refer to such epochs as have often been fixed on 
for the commencement of the period in question, for example, the conceding of 
title of universal bishop by a particular emperor to the pope of Rome, the era of 
Justinian's legislation, or the crowning of Charlemagne emperor of the west, all 
events of little moment as regards the more distinctive features that were to mark 
the period itself. 



THE CHURCH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 431 

anything further is implied it should only, we conceive, be 
looked for in some general correspondence, as to form, 
between the symbol and the reality, such as might be suffi- 
cient to guide thoughtful and inquiring minds to a more firm 
assurance of the realization of the vision. But all precise and 
definite calculations respecting the periods, as they necessarily 
proceed upon a disregard of the symbolical character of the 
book, and upon a too external and political contemplation of 
the events to which it points, so they must inevitably be de- 
feated of their aim in the future, as they have continually been in 
the past. The prophecy was not written to give men to know 
after such a fashion the times and the seasons which the Father 
has put in his own power.* 

The same considerations, it may be added, which have con- 
ducted us to this conclusion, in regard to the periods connected 
with the Church's humiliation and conflict, substantially apply 
also to the period of her future ascendency. The thousand 
years' reign of the saints must be taken like the others, sym- 
bolically, and as such it forms a perfect contrast to the com- 
paratively brief and broken sections of time that preceded it. 
It is formed of the round number of totality in earthly things, 
the ten ; and that increased to one of its higher values, by 
being twice multiplied into itself, (10x10x10=1000,) still fur- 
ther heightened by being connected, not with days or with 
months, but with years. A ten times ten revolution of years, 
and that again increased tenfold ; what a symbol of complete- 
ness ! What a contrast to the three and a half days of triumph 
over the slain witnesses ! or even to the three and a half years 
of usurped dominion on the part of the beast ! Yet such is the 
relative continuance allotted in the decrees of heaven to the 
power and prevalence of the good, as contrasted with the evil ; 
80 long is the true Church of the Eedeemer destined to ride 
upon the high places of the earth in comparison with the days 
in which she was made to see evil. 

* Compare what was previously said upon this subject at p. 182, stq. 



432 THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF 



SECTION lY. 

THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF THE CHURCH AND KINQDOM OF 
CHRIST IN" THEIR RELATION TO HIS SECOND COMING AND THE 
CLOSING ISSUES OF HIS MEDIATORIAL KINGDOM. 

The portions of the Apocah^se and of other prophetical 
books which have already passed under our review, reach down 
to what is known as the millennium, or the thousand years' 
reign. That the things written concerning this belong to the 
still undeveloped future, we entertain not the remotest doubt, 
and regard as utterly futile all the attempts that have been 
made to accommodate the terms of the description to any 
period of the past.* The very best that has yet been can be 
nothing more than the prelude of what may still be expected 
of good. But the subject of the millennium, and the closing 
periods generally of the world's history, have such a real or sup- 

* One of the latest of these attempts is Hengstenberg's, who would date the com- 
mencement of the miUennium from the year 800, when Charlemagne was proclauned 
emperor ; according to which the millennium has already reached its close, and we are 
now sustaining the assaiilt of Gog and Magog. Of this view Auberlen justly 
remarks, " One is at a loss to know, whether to be more astonshed at the extraor- 
dinary manner in which the word of prophecy is impaired and evacuated by it, at 
the greatly too favorable estimate it makes of the past history of the Church, or at 
the want of discrimination which would thus place the darkest periods of the mid- 
dle ages and the Papacy alongside those of the Reformation, and treat them all as 
ages of gold. Was it during these thousand years, when so many sins were com- 
mitted, and that, too, in the name of Christ, by Catholics and those of the national 
and orthodox establishments, that the devil was actually bound ? Was it during 
those times of the Waldensian persecutions, of the Inquisition, of Huguenot wars, 
and Bartholomew nights, that the martyrs governed the world? Was it during 
tliose tunes, when princes were, indeed, styled Apostolical Majesties, Most Chris- 
tian Kings, etc., yet lived in the most flagrant sins, that they were really priests 
of God and kings of Christ ? It is truly lamentable that a man like Hengstenberg 
should have contributed in such a manner to mislead the judgments of men re- 
specting the nature of the Church and the world, and should have been able to 
derive from the prophets no deeper and purer insight. He substitutes what was 
a false anticipation of the thousand years' reign for the reign itself; external poHtical 
Christianity for the real ; Christianity of the name and the lip for the true and 
genuine." (P. 415.) In truth, the description given in the epistles to the seven 
Churches of the kind of Christianity which alone the Lord could recognize and own, 
forms a strong anticipative protest against such a millennium, and repudiates it. 



THE CHUECH AND KINGDOM OF CHKIST. 433 

posed connection with tlie second coming of Messiah, that it was 
necessary, in the first instance, to investigate the language of 
Scripture upon this point. We are the rather inclined to do 
so, as we are persuaded that if the scriptural representations 
regarding it were but calmly considered, there might both be 
more of formal agreement on the main subject, and less of con- 
fident assertion generally on some of the subordinate topics 
connected with it. 

I. The doctrine of the Lord's coming is common to both 
Testaments, as the desire and expectation of it belongs to the 
people of God under both dispensations. It could scarcely fail, 
therefore, that the mode of representation employed respecting 
it in 'New Testament Scripture should bear a close resemblance 
to that which had been in use under the Old, and should even 
be in great measure coincident with it. The proper starting- 
point for all the representations is the entrance of sin, which 
brought as its necessary result the withdrawal of God's mani- 
fested presence, and laid a restraint upon his intercourse with 
men. Prior to that fatal period, he did not need to come, as 
from a distance, to do anything for man ; he did it as being 
already and habitually at hand. Even after the transgression 
the fallen pair are represented not as seeing the Lord come for 
the occasion, but as hearing his voice walking in the garden m 
the cool of the day ; they knew the familiar sound of their 
heavenly Father's footsteps. But they were to know it thus 
no more. The Paradise where God could so familiarly dwell 
with man, had now become to them a forfeited region ; and 
not till the evil which then entered should have run its course, 
not till the works of sin should be destroyed and the warfare 
with its abettors brought to a perpetual end, could the original 
state of things in regard to men's relation to God be again 
restored. Then, however — that is, when the new and better 
Paradise is brought in — the tabernacle of God shall be once 
more with men, and he shall dwell with them in an ever- 
lasting fellowship of love. But till that blessed consummation 
there can only be occasional manifestations ; comings of such a 
nature and in such succession as may be needed to maintain 

the divine interest in the world, to provide the requisite means 

28 



434 THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF 

of grace and comfort to the Lord's people, and administer sea- 
sonable rebukes to his adversaries. 

ITow in Old Testament Scripture there appears a perpetual 
struggle against this untoward state of things. Faith is ever 
striving to bring God out of the distance to which he has 
.retired, and present him in immediate connection with the 
deeper experiences of the soul and the more important move- 
ments of the world's history. The Book of Psalms may be 
regarded as a continued exemplification of this. How often in 
perusing it do we feel as if we even heard the voice of God, 
and saw his shape ! The soul, animated by a lively spirit of 
faith, and thereby raised to the higher moods of spiritual 
thought and feeling, moves among the things of God as among 
sensible realities ; is tremblingly alive to whatever marks his 
presence or his absence ; is alternately cheered by the light of 
his countenance, and troubled by the hidings of his face ; and 
is conscious of all the indications of a sustained or interrupted 
fellowship. " Lord, by thy favor thou didst make my mount- 
ain to stand strong ; thou didst hide thy face, and I was troub- 
led." " Arise, O Lord, in thine anger ; lift up thyself because 
of the rage of mine enemies ; and awake for me to the judg- 
ment that thou hast commanded." " In my distress I called 
upon the Lord, and cried unto my God : he heard my voice 
out of his temple, and my cry came before him into his ears. 
He bowed the heavens also and came down." " O God, how 
long shall the adversary reproach? Shall the enemy blas- 
pheme thy name for ever ? Why withdrawest thou thy hand, 
even thy right hand ? Pluck it out of thy bosom ! " "Arise ; 
why sleepest thou, O Lord ? Cast us not off for ever," etc. 

Such a mode of contemplating and addressing God pervad- 
ing a book which is the production of so many hands, and in 
its several parts is connected with so many diversities of time 
and place, could not, it is clear, belong to a few isolated indi- 
viduals, or be transient in its exercise. It must have been the 
natural tendency and expression of that spirit which grew out 
of the religion of the Old Covenant, and' which it was the de- 
sign as well of its symbolical institutions as of its express prom- 
ises to strengthen and foster. Hence, also, it enters deeply 



THE CHURCH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 435 

into the language of prophecy. Everything of moment in the 
dispensations of God is there connected with his presence and 
working. So, for example, in the earliest prophecy after the 
transactions connected with the fall, the prediction of Enoch, 
which is preserved in Jude though not recorded in the original 
history : " Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousand of his 
saints, to execute judgment upon all ; and to convince all that 
are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they 
have ungodly committed, and of all their, hard speeches which 
ungodly sinners have spoken against him." The prophecy, as 
appears from the application made of it by St. Jude, had an 
extensive reach, and might be understood even of the final 
manifestation of the Lord to execute judgment. But, from the 
time and circumstances in which it was spoken, there can be 
no doubt that it pointed more immediately to the clouds of 
wrath which were already gathering around antediluvian sin- 
ners, and that when these burst in the deluge there was the 
first realization of the Lord's threatened coming to judgment. 
In like manner, the next recorded manifestations of righteous- 
ness of an unusual kind — those connected with the destruction 
of Sodom and Gomorrah, the punishment of Egypt, and the 
rescue of Israel — are in Scripture associated with the Lord's 
immediate presence and agency. He is represented as " com- 
ing down to see and hear " how matters stood ; and when he 
saw smiting on the one hand, with pestilence and destruction 
on the other, stretching forth his hand to protect and succor. 
What a vivid representation is given in the song of Moses of 
the Lord's appearance and working, in connection with the 
events of the Red Sea ! It seems as if it spake of what the eye 
had seen and the ear had heard : " The Lord is a man of war ; 
the Lord is his name. Thy right hand, O Lord, is become 
glorious in power ; thy right hand, O Lord, hath dashed in 
pieces the enemy. Thou didst blow with thy wind, the 
sea covered them ; they sank as lead in the mighty waters. 
Thou stretchedst out tliy right hand, the earth swallowed 
them." 

It is not otherwise in prophecy generally. The descriptions 
vary in respect to imagery and vividness of coloring ; but they 



4:36 THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF 

are alike in connecting tlie Lord's personal presence with 
events, whether of mercy or of judgment, which bore materi- 
ally on the well-being of his people, or on the power and policy 
of their enemies. If signal judgment was to be executed upon 
the worldly kingdoms which sought to oppress or extinguish 
the covenant-people, proclamation was made of the Lord's com- 
ing to inflict it, (Isa. xiii, xix, xxx, 27, etc.) When sin pre- 
vailed among the covenant-people themselves, the Lord speaks 
of his soul departing from them, or of going far off from his 
sanctuary, (Jer. vi, 8 ; Ezek. viii, 6,) as he actually did when 
he gave them up to the will of their enemies, and laid their 
land desolate for a season. On the other hand, when the pros- 
pect of better times was announced, it came in the form of an 
assurance that the Lord would appear with salvation, would 
himself even go before as a leader, or as a protector bring up 
their rearward, (Hosea, vi, 1-3 ; Isa. xl ; lii, 12.) And when 
the remnant from Babylon again settled at Jerusalem, they 
were met with the prophetic testimony that he also had re- 
turned to Jerusalem with mercies, (Zech. i, 16.) But were the 
people not taught to expect another, and, in the stricter sense, 
personal coming of the Lord from heaven ? Undoubtedly they 
were ; not, however, by the simple announcement of such a 
coming, but by the conditions and circumstances associated 
with it, which were such as to require for their fulfillment a 
personal appearance of godhead in the flesh. Predictions like 
those in Malachi, in which it was intimated that the Lord 
should come suddenly to his temple, that the day of his coming 
should be terrible, and should burn as an oven, might be paral- 
leled by many others which had their accomplishment in events 
long prior to the incarnation, and were accompanied by no ex- 
ternal displays of the divine personality. But then in other 
prophecies there were particular adjuncts connected with the 
coming. It was to take place amid conditions of flesh and blood, 
of time and circumstance. There was to be a preparation of 
the way by a messenger going before, a birth in a definite line 
and at a specific place, a life and death alike marked by the 
most singular characteristics ; all not only affording ground for 
expecting^ but even containing terms that indispensably re- 



THE CHURCH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 437 

quired a coming of the most distinct and palpable description. 
It was not, therefore, so properly the coming considered by 
itself, as the declared manner and objects of the coming, which 
rendered that of Messiah's predicted appearance in the flesh 
different from all other announcements of the Lord's coming. 
And if, on that account, the epithet real is applied to the one, 
and figurative to the other, or if the one is designated a per- 
sonal coming, and the others only virtical or spiritual^ such 
modes of distinction, it must be remembered, are not derived 
from Scripture, nor are they strictly accordant with the truth 
of things. 

The Lord was as really present at the destruction of Sodom, 
at the deliverance of Israel from the host of Pharaoh, and at the 
restoration of the captives from Babylon, as in the life and 
death of Jesus of N^azareth. There was a proper coming, and 
an actual presence, in the earlier as well as the later events re- 
ferred to ; only in the former withdrawn from human sight, 
and forming no part of the visible realities which made up the 
historical transactions of the time. It was there, however, as a 
living force, and the invisibility attaching to it was the result 
merely of a defect in the perceptive part of our natures, which 
(if he had pleased) might have been supplied by some higher 
intuition, or even by an intensifying of the power of spiritual 
apprehension. It was from no want of reality in the appear- 
ances, which betokened, on a certain occasion, the presence of 
the Lord and of his ministering host, but for want of the neces- 
sary discernment, that the servant of Elisha was unconscious of 
their existence ; and when the prophet prayed that the serv- 
ant's eyes might be opened, presently, we are told, he saw the 
mountain full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha. 
(2 Kings vi, 17.) In like manner, the peculiar elevation of 
soul which was given to Stephen on the eve of his martyrdom 
enabled him to see what had otherwise remained hid : the glory 
of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God. Jesus 
himself is reported to have heard with perfect distinctness a 
word addressed to him by the Father, which, in the duller ears 
of those about him, sounded only as a confused murmur, 
(John xii, 28, 29 ;) and subsequently, in his own manifestation 



438 THE PKOPHETICAL FUTUKE OF 

to Saul on the way to Damascus, Saul both saw and heard iii 
the clearest manner what seems to have made bnt a faint im- 
pression npon the senses of others. (Acts ix, T.) How, indeed, 
in the case of One who is everywhere present, without whom 
not even a sparrow falls to the ground, nor a single event, 
from the least to the greatest in any region of the universe, is 
accomplished ; how but by a special adaptation of himself to 
the existing faculties of his creatures, or by an elevation of 
these faculties to a nearer conformity to his own spiritual 
nature, can they perceive him where he is, or descry the signs 
of his approach ? The Son of man speaks of himself as being 
in heaven at the very time he was living upon the earth, 
(John iii, 13,) as from his essential divinity he must have been, 
and must also have appeared to be to the higher beings who 
could penetrate the region of his glory. So that, as regards 
the Lord's presence and coming, the real and the visible are 
by no means to be regarded as interchangeable ; and it is only 
from the accompanying circumstances and conditions that we 
can determine, in regard to any predicted manifestation of 
himself, whether it is to be patent to the senses of men, or con- 
cealed from their view. 

Such are the conclusions we arrive at on the subject of the 
Lord's coming, from a consideration of what is written of it in 
Old Testament Scripture ; and the presumption is, as we have 
already indicated, that it may not be materially different when 
we pass from the old to the new. Here it is the Messiah in 
his distinctly defined personality as the God-man, and in his 
character as the glorified Redeemer, whose coming in glory is 
announced as the great hope of the Church. When on earth 
he was known as "he that should come," (6 epxofievo^, the 
coming one,) coming to accomplish the great salvation, and 
satisfy the longing expectations of spiritual minds. But this 
could only be done in part at the first appearance of the Lord. 
It was even necessary that the work begun on earth should be 
prosecuted in the heavenly places that the fall number of the 
elect might be gathered in, and the way prepared for that final 
possession of the world, and that free intercommunion between 
God and men which is to constitute the blessedness of paradise 



THE CHUKCH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 439 

restored. The agency of Christ, therefore, must be carried on 
within the vail and accomplish great results among men before 
he can appear in glory. And in regard both to the terminal 
point itself and the intervening steps necessary to secure its 
being reached, we might justly expect representations to be 
given in the prophetic word very similar to those which had 
appeared in Old Testament Scripture regarding the incarna- 
tion, and the more peculiar manifestations of divine power 
and glory that preceded it. 

Such we find to be actually the case. There is a coming 
spoken of in l^ew Testament Scripture which may be desig- 
nated in the proper sense terminal, and therefore also visible, 
so that every eye shall see it, and every heart be filled either 
with joy or dismay on account of it. And there are comings 
of a provisional kind, which all point toward the ultimate 
manifestation, and differ from it only in being less palpable in 
their nature, and less complete and lasting in their results. 
The reference to both modes of coming is found in our Lord's 
own discourses upon the subject. In some of the parables it 
is presented under the aspect of a single and conclusive event, 
as in the parables of the talents and the pounds, where he 
appears as one going into a far coimtry for a time, and leaving 
his servants to their several spheres of privilege and duty, 
with the prospect of a personal reckoning on his return ; in 
the parable also of the wise and foolish virgins, which presents 
the Church in its false as well as its true portions under the 
aspect of a bridal company waiting for the arrival of the 
proper spouse to the celebration of his marriage solemnity ; 
and in the delineation, substantially also a parabolical one, of 
the appearance of the Son of man on the throne of judgment, 
when he shall have come finally to separate between the goats 
and the sheep, and to give to every one as his works may have 
been. In all these representations the coming of the Lord has 
the aspect of a grand and culminating event, which winds up 
the affairs of time and ushers in the destinies of eternity. But 
if we turn to the parable of the wicked husbandmen (Matt, 
xxi, 33-43) we find a coming spoken of which is plainly inter- 
preted by our Lord to have had its accomplishment in an 



440 THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OP 

earlier and merely provisional event. There the hnsbandmen 
are represented as consummating a long- continued com'se of 
wickedness bj proceeding to kill him who had ^ome to them 
in the character of son and heir. And the question is then 
asked, " When the Lord of the vineyard cometh what will he 
do unto those husbandmen ? " The persons present instinct- 
ively supplied the answer by saying that he would miserably 
destroy those wicked men, and let out his vineyard to others, 
that would render him the fruits in their seasons. On receiv- 
ing this answer, and making special application of the truth it 
embodied, the Lord forthwith uttered the memorable words, 
'' Therefore say I unto you. The kingdom of God shall be 
taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits 
thereof." So that the divine procedure, which had the effect 
of transferring the kingdom from Jewish to Gentile soil, must 
correspond to the coming of the Lord of the vineyard in the 
parable for the purpose of dispossessing one class of husband- 
men and installing another. But how was that transference 
effected ? Simply by the setting up of the Gospel dispensa- 
tion by means of the word preached and the Spirit be- 
stowed among the Gentiles, along with the overthrow of 
Jerusalem and the dissolution of the old economy. The Lord 
then came and let out the vineyard to others. 

]^or is this the only place in our Lord's discourses where the 
same use and application is made of the expression. In the 
tenth chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel we have a full report 
of the address delivered by our Lord on the occasion of his 
sending out his apostles on a missionary tour, the first of its 
kind. Precisely because it was the first, the moment when 
the d-TToaTf-XXeiv (the sending forth) came into force, from which 
the apostles derived their name, Jesus perceived in it the 
image of the whole future mission-work of the kingdom. Ac- 
cordingly he framed his address on the occasion so as to 
embrace the whole, and rendered it substantially a charge to 
all ministers and missionaries of the Gospel to the end of time. 
That Jesus should have taken this wide and comprehensive 
view of the subject is itself an evidence of his divine greatness. 
For a mere man to have done so might justly have been held 



THE CHURCH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 441 

extravagance or presumption ; but in Mm who could see the 
end /rem the beginning and in the beginning it was perfectly 
natural. And because he thus embraced in his perspective 
the whole future progress of his kingdom, even to the bringing 
in of its final results, he did not fail at the outset to deliver 
appropriate counsel and encouragement for the later as well 
as the earlier laborers belonging to it. The discourse, indeed, 
falls into three successive portions. The first, which reaches 
to the close of verse 15, has respect more immediately to the 
present temporary mission committed to the twelve, as appears 
from their being charged to confine themselves to the house of 
Israel, without turning aside either to the Samaritans or the 
Gentiles, and also from their being instructed to take with 
them neither scrip nor staff, changes of raiment nor provisions, 
restrictions which were afterward withdrawn when their more 
general and permanent mission began, (Luke xxii, 35, 36.) 
The second part, which again begins with the " I send you " 
at verse 16, has respect to a more advanced stage of the work, 
though one in which those apostles had still the chief burden 
to bear ; it embraces the main period of apostolic agency. In 
this portion mention is made for the first time of persecutions, 
and such persecutions as should not be of a merely local kind, 
but would involve the appearance of the disciples before kings 
and rulers, as well as councils and synagogues, and among 
Gentiles not less than Jews. For the emergencies and trials 
thence arising the promise is also for the first time given them 
of the Holy Spirit, with all requisite and suitable gifts of 
grace. And the limitation of the period as well as of the 
sphere to which their agency was to be more especially con- 
fined is marked in the closing words of the section, verse 23, 
" Yerily I say unto you. Ye shall not have gone over (reAt-tTT/re, 
finished, namely, in respect to the great aim of the mission) 
the cities of Israel till the Son of man be come." A pregnant 
word indeed for those first heralds of the Gospel, as it already 
gave intimation of difiiculties to be encountered among their 
own countrymen, which they should but very partially succeed 
in overcoming within the allotted period for their labors. A 
pregnant word also in respect to the light it threw upon the 



442 THE PKOPHETICAL FUTURE OF 

future intentions and purposes of our Lord ! He announces a 
coming so near that they should not have time to finish their 
work as apostles among the cities of Israel till it should be 
brought to pass. What possibly could be meant by this but 
his coming to order *and settle anew the afiairs of his kingdom 
among men ! Coming, not in visible personality, yet in real 
majesty, first to endow his followers with power from on high, 
and cheer them with manifestations of his presence, and then 
to remove by his judgments the old polity and commonwealth 
out of the way, which from being superstitiously clung to 
served only to mar the progress of the new, that the field 
might be left clear to the Gospel of the kingdom. But the 
end, which was to be introduced by this coming of the Son of 
man, was only the beginning of what was to constitute the 
end in another respect. As the spiritual kingdom then to be 
set up constituted the 'New Jerusalem in its commencement, 
and the old that was to be destroyed had become a kind of 
spiritual Sodom or Egypt, (Eev. xi, 8,) so the work as a whole, 
with its salvation on the one side, and its destruction on the 
other, formed a striking image of the still more signal coming 
of Christ, when the old world of sin shall be finally abolished, 
and the new brought in with its scenes of everlasting purity 
and bliss. Therefore in the last section of the discourse our 
Lord proceeds to unfold what might be expected by all future 
laborers in his kingdom, both in trial here and in recompense 
hereafter, what troubles and persecutions they might look for, 
what encouragements and supports he would be ready to 
extend to them, what fidelity and zeal it would be their call- 
ing to exhibit, and in what fullness of blessing and glory their 
service would issue if they but continued steadfast in it to 
the end.* 

* The sense put, and unavoidably put in the above remarks upon Matt, x, 23, 
and upon the coming indicated in the parable of the husbandmen, shows how 
groundless the statement of Bishop Horsley is, " that the phrase of our Lord's 
coming, whenever it occurs in his prediction of the Jewish war, as well as in most 
other passages of the New Testament, is to be taken in its literal meaning as 
denoting his coming in person, in visible pomp and glory, to the general judg- 
ment." The investigation on which he founds his statement is very summary, 
and neither of the passages above noticed are referred to. 



THE CHURCH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 443 

There are not wanting other passages of a similar kind in 
our Lord's discourses ; for example, Matt, xvi, 28, " Yerilj, I 
saj unto jou. There be some standing here who shall not taste 
of death till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom ;" 
which by no fair and natural exposition can be referred 
primarily to events and times altogether subsequent to the 
apostolic age ; it must indicate what some of those then present 
ived to witness, namely, the manifestation of Christ's divine 
power after his ascension, when introducing the new dispensa- 
tion and formally removing the old. This is the only thing 
that can be regarded as properly falling within the terms of 
the description ; and what, in effect, was it but the first move- 
ments of the stone in Daniel's vision, proceeding to displace 
the things opposed to it, and to take possession of the field ? 
" The day of the Son of man," in Luke xvii, 24, must also be 
viewed as having its primary reference to the same period ; 
since if referred to the final advent, the practical exhortations 
connected with it would not be applicable. And in Matt, xxiv 
it is impossible altogether to separate between the immediate 
and the final coming. To a certain extent the two are inter- 
mingled together, and the one is contemplated as the type and 
presage of the other. 

At the same time there can be no doubt, that the final return 
of the Saviour is often held forth in ]^ew Testament Scripture 
as the great object of hope and expectation to the Church. It 
meets us at the very commencement of the apostolic history, in 
the words addressed by the angels to those who witnessed the 
ascension : " This same Jesus, who is taken up from you into 
heaven, shall so come in like manner, as ye have seen him go 
into heaven," which manifestly gives promise of a return 
equally visible and glorious as the departure which had just 
taken place. It is again, shortly afterward, and in the most 
pointed manner, referred to by the Apostle Peter in his second 
address to the people of Jerusalem, when representing it as 
necessary that the heavens should receive Christ only till the 
times of the restitution of all things. The same apostle in his 
second epistle describes believers not only as holding fast the 
promise of Christ's coming, but even as called to hasten the 



444: THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF 

day of its fulfillment ; and St. Paul characterizes the followers 
of Jesus as those " who love his appearing." It is needless to 
multiply examples. But such passages alternate with others, 
in which a coming is spoken of, which is neither terminal nor 
marked by any outward personal display. The history detailed 
in the Book of Acts, though formally that of the apostles, 
appears more as the continuation . of Christ's personal agency, 
carried on through the instrumentality of the immediate actors, 
than of their own proper working. The wonders of Pentecost 
were exhibited as the evidence of Christ's exaltation, and the 
fruit of his power. The miraculous healing of the poor cripple 
at the temple-gate, and the no less miraculous judgment on 
Ananias and Sapphira in the church, were alike viewed as the 
results of Christ's outstretched hand ; they happened because 
he (the Holy One whom the Father had anointed, chapter iv, 
27-30) was present with the power of his Spirit to do signs and 
wonders. When the apostles bore to other lands the Grospel of 
salvation, and planted Christian Churches, Christ himself was 
declared to have come and preached peace by them, (Eph. ii, 17.) 
On him as a present living Saviour they laid the foundation 
of a living Church, (1 Cor. iii, 10, 11.) In the Book of Reve- 
lation, more especially, where the final coming is most conspic- 
uously displayed, provisional and invisible comings are also 
most distinctly noticed. " Remember from whence thou art 
fallen," is the charge to the Church of Ephesus, " and repent 
and do the first works ; or else I will come unto thee quickly, 
and will remove thy candlestick out of his place." So also to 
others, " Repent, or else I will come unto thee quickly ;" " If 
thou shalt not watch, I will come on thee as a thief, and thou 
shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee." Nay, he 
even speaks of himself to the Church of Laodicea as standing 
at the door and knocking. In the subsequent parts of the 
Book it is he who, as a " mighty angel," is represented (chap- 
ter x) as coming down from heaven, and setting his feet upon 
the sea and dry land, as going presently to take permanent 
possession of both ; and who again, during the currency of the 
sixth vial, and in respect to the things then in progress, pro- 
claims, " Behold, I come as a thief; blessed is he that watcheth 



THE CHUKCH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 445 

and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked and they see his 
shame." Chap, xvi, 15.* 

From the general current, therefore, of scriptural representa- 
tions concerning Christ ; from the language employed in the 
Book of Revela tion, and in other parts of the I^ew Testament ; 
it is plain that the question of Christ's second advent or his 
coming, not to depart again,, but to dwell with his people, is 
not to be determined by the mere announcement of his coming. 
The further question has still to be considered, For what pur- 
pose is the coming announced, and in what manner may it be 
expected to take place ? It was Christ's promise to the disci- 
ples before he left them, that though corporeally absent, he 
would still be really and effectively present with them ; that 
he would manifest himself to them as he could not do to the 
world, and would be ever coming to do works of mercy or of 
judgment in their behalf. In every age the heart of faith finds 
the realization of this promise, sometimes more, sometimes less 
conspicuously, though never so as to satisfy its longings, or con- 
summate his own work, till he shall come visibly in the clouds 
of heaven with power and great glory. And the more particu- 
lar question, whether this terminal coming is to precede the 
millennium or to be subsequent to it, must depend for its set- 
tlement on the things spoken of the millennium, whether they 
are such as befit the manifested presence and glory of the 
Saviour, or are properly compatible with it. This can only be 
learned from a careful consideration of what is written upon 
the subject. We turn, therefore, to the millennium itself. 

* When all these things are put together, and when it is remembered how our 
Lord taught a parable for the express purpose of destroying the expectation that 
the kingdom should immediately appear in visible glory, (Luke xix, 12;) when it 
is remembered also how the apostles, in their more specific passages, interpose a 
long series of operations and events between their day and the consummation of 
all things, (as in 2 Thess. ii, and the Apocalypse;) it is difficult to express one's 
astonishment at the confidence with which it is still often affirmed of the apostles 
that they looked for the return of Christ before their own death. If so, they must 
have been at once the most impracticable of learners, and the most inconsistent of 
writers. The real explanation of the matter lies in their singular strength of faith, 
with which many of their commentators can so little sympathize, and which led 
them, in a manner, to overleap the gulf of ages, to identify the present with the 
future, and to realize great events, whether near or remote, in their pressing mag- 
nitude and importance. 



446 THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF 

II. It is only in the Book of Revelation that we have any 
formal or explicit account of what is known as the millennium, 
or the thousand years' reign of Christ and his saints. The Old 
Testament prophets contain many delineations which point 
toward it, and which shall only then reach their proper accom- 
plishment ; but they are for the most part of a general de- 
scription, and are couched under, the vail of Old Testament 
relations. They speak, for example, of a time to come, when 
the knowledge of the glory of the Lord shall cover the earth 
as the waters cover the sea, (Hab. ii, 14 ;) when the Lord shall. 
be king over all the earth, and his name one, (Zech. xiv, 9 ;) 
when men shall be blessed in him, and all nations shall call 
him blessed, (Psa. Ixxii, 17;) when the earth, having been 
smitten with the rod of his mouth, and the wicked slain with 
the breath of his lips, righteousness and peace shall universally 
prevail, and there shall be nothing to hurt or destroy in all 
God's holy mountain, (Isa. xi, 1-9.) There are many such de- 
scriptions sufficient to show that the Old Testament prophets 
were enabled to descry, even from their comparatively distant 
watch-tower, the sure and final overthrow of every form of 
evil in the world, to be followed by a long and happy reign, 
during which the truth of God should be everywhere triumph- 
ant, and the blessings of salvation shed abroad. But beyond 
this nothing can with certainty be anticipated from such de- 
scriptions. Those of Daniel, however, are somewhat more 
specific. In the first of them the kingdom, represented by 
the stone cut out without hands, the kingdom that was to be 
set up by the God of heaven, is described as " breaking in 
pieces and consuming all those kingdoms, and itself standing 
for ever," apparently implying not only the ultimate success 
and permanent establishment of the divine kingdom, but 
along with this, and as somehow necessary to it, the formal 
abolition and disappearance of the kingdoms which were con- 
trary to its spirit, and had opposed its progress. So also in 
the other vision, that of chap, vii, the prophet says he "beheld 
till the beast (the embodied representation of all the worldly 
kingdoms in their hostility to the kingdom of Messiah) was 
slain, and his body destroyed, and given to the burning 



THE CHURCH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 447 

flame," as if not merely the spirit that had animated it, but 
the very form and shape it had assumed, was to come to an 
end. And again, to the like effect in the explanation, " The 
judgment shall sit, and they (namely, the saints, the only 
party of an opposite kind mentioned in the preceding verse, 
they, therefore, having now received power and authority to 
judge) shall take away his dominion, to consume and destroy 
it to the end. And the kingdom and dominion, and the great- 
ness (or power) of the kingdom under the whole heaven shall 
be given to the people of the saints of the Most High, whose 
kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall 
serve and obey him." If this language does not certainly 
betoken, it yet seems naturally to imply something more than 
the infusion of a better spirit into the kingdoms of the world ; 
to indicate an actual remodeling of the state of things among 
men, and a fresh organization of the social fabric, such as 
would formally commit the administration of affairs into the 
hands of the Lord's people by making personal piety and 
worth the essential qualification for civil rule. 

The indications to this effect in Daniel are confirmed, and 
still more distinctly exhibited in the Apocalypse, which con- 
tains by much the most explicit revelation upon the subject. 
It is not simply, however, the account given of the thousand 
years' reign (chap, xx, 1-6) that here calls for consideration, 
but the manner also in which this is introduced, and the ante- 
cedent condition of things out of which it is represented as 
emerging. Prior to this millennial reign and preparatory to 
it the worldly power in all its successive phases and forms of 
working is seen to have gone down. It had passed through 
every conceivable species of combination and culture from the 
time of the old heathen monarchies down to the subdivided 
and at last professedly Christian kingdoms of more recent 
times. In the course of the changes it underwent, and as the 
result of the contact into which it came with Christianity, it 
had appeared for a season to die ; the stroke as of a mortal 
wound seemed to have befallen it ; but the former vigor again 
returned to it, and even more than the former danger to the 
cause and kingdom of Christ became connected with its opera- 



448 THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF 

\ 

tions. Instead of carrying into fiiU and proper effect tlie spirit 
of the Gospel, it had only imbibed as much of the Christian 
element as served to render its ministrations to the flesh more 
perilous for those who knew not the power of godliness, on 
which account its Christianity had proved but a mother of 
abominations, and its prophecy a spirit of carnal pride and 
lying divination. All, therefore, had been judged and cast 
out; first, the whore, or the corrupt and faithless Church, 
which even the worldly power came at length to repudiate ; 
and then this power itself, the beast, with his ally, the false 
prophet, both have been adjudged to the lake of fire, or finally 
put down as irreconcilably opposed to the spirit and interests 
of the divine kingdom. The last trial had been given to the 
world in what might be called its native and self-contrived 
organizations, to see if its authorities would submit them- 
selves aright to the truth of the Gospel, and have their 
administration directed in accordance with the mind of 
Christ. But without the desired effect. The old enmity 
still lurked ; the opposition to God and holiness only as- 
sumed new and more aggravated forms, and the kingdoms 
themselves, as well as the beast that represented their un- 
godliness, and the false prophet that, as it were, inspirited 
and justified the evil, were swept away into the blackness 
of darkness for ever. 

It seems scarcely possible to understand all this of a simple 
diffusion of Gospel light and a general ascendency of the 
Christian element under forms of social life and conditions of 
working such as the world has hitherto exhibited. We might 
h^ve conceived it would be so if merely a corrupt and apos- 
tate Christianity, and a science and learning opposed to the 
Gospel, were all that had been represented as going into per- 
dition. But it is otherwise when the beast also and the king- 
doms of the world are spoken of as sharing the same fate ; for 
this seems to import that the worldly powers or forms of 
earthly government now and hitherto subsisting in the world 
should pass away as in their very nature incompatible with 
that higher state of things which is in prospect. They cannot, 
it would appear, be so divested of the bestial properties in- 



THE CHURCH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 449 

herent in tliem as to be capable of assuming tbe aspect of that 
kingdom whicb had its proper representation in one possessing 
the likeness of a son of man. The transition from one to the 
other involves a shaking of earthly things to their foundations 
that other things which cannot be shaken, the things which 
are of God, may remain. And indeed let any one reflect on 
the invariable tendency of worldly power and dominion, how 
constantly it takes the direction of fleshly indulgence and 
selfish aggrandizement, becomes partial or exclusive in its 
operations, makes undue account of the adventitious and the 
temporal, while it leaves comparatively unheeded what is of 
primary and enduring moment ; and this not as in one age 
merely, or in some particular phases of political and social 
life, but in all : let any one reflect carefully on this and say 
whether worldly kingdoms as such can be conceived to per- 
petuate their formal existence on the supposition of everything 
coming to bear the image of a living Christianity. It is one 
thing to overthrow evil in its more prevailing forms, but 
another thing to bring in and establish on a secure and per- 
manent footing the contrary good. The progress of enlighten- 
ment and the growing diffusion of divine truth may of them- 
selves expose the corruptions of a false religion, and render 
manifest the insufficiency or ungodliness of a mere earthly 
wisdom. But they may still prove wholly inadequate to the 
higher end of making righteousness everywhere and continu- 
ally triumphant ; nay, must do so, unless the entire frame- 
work of society shall be cast anew, so as to lay open all the 
avenues of life for the good, and close. them against the evil. 
Yet nothing less than this is the extent to which the change 
predicted shall reach. It is that the saints not merely shall 
become more numerous and powerful than hitherto, but shall 
formally possess the kingdom under the whole heaven, and 
exercise its dominion. It is that the god of this world shall 
be bound in his proper home that men may not be deceived 
and turned aside from the right by the lust of the flesh, the 
lust of the eye, and the pride of life. It is, therefore, that the 
spiritual shall carry it over the natural in the ordinary affairs 

of the world, that the grace and energy of holy principle, not 

29 



450 THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF 

hereditary place, or tlie adventitious distinctions of rank and 
fortune, shall come to bear general sway among men. And 
how this can be done without many organic changes being 
wrought in the social and political sphere it is impossible to 
conceive. 

The more closely the account of the millennial reign is exam- 
ined, the more does it confii*m us in these impressions. Thus, 
while we read still of the nations of the earth, (chap, xx, 3, 8,) 
we hear no more of the old worldly kingdoms, nor of the beast 
and the false prophet. The existing and historical forms of the 
world's power, and wisdom, and glory, have all disappeared. 
Then, the thrones which were set for judgment, and which un- 
questionably represented not only the actual, but also the osten- 
sible, forces that are destined to regulate the affairs of that 
better age, are said to be for those who had suffered for the 
word of Grod and for the testimony of Jesus; a description 
which, however understood in respect to the particular occu- 
pants, and of which we shall speak presently, undoubtedly 
denotes such as are distinguished for the most faithful and 
uncompromising adherence to the principles of the GospeL 
These it is who are then to appear before the world as its 
guides and rulers ; by them somehow, and by them in the rec- 
ognized character of the Lord's people, the world is to be pre- 
sided over and governed. Of them, as emphatically '' blessed 
and holy," it is written, that they are the " priests of God and 
of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years." Being 
like Chi'ist himself, priests upon thrones, their kingly power 
and influence shall be based on ascertained holiness of charac- 
ter ; all authority shall be held directly of God, and such things 
only shall be allowed to proceed as carry with them the divine 
sanction, and are fitted to promote the interests of righteous- 
ness. Happy period, truly, that shall witness the commence- 
ment of such an administration ! But what a remodeling shall 
it not need to bring along with it of the political and social 
fabric ! In the same direction, also, points the notice that is 
given of the prime agent and patron of evil. Satan, we are 
told, shall be bound during the thousand years' reign in the 
bottomless pit, so that he shall be able to deceive the nations 



THE CHURCH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 451 

no more. Here, again, there is a mighty gulf to be bridged 
over for the world, and even for the Church. Outside the pro- 
fessing Church, the held is, in a man'ner, all his own ; he is the 
spirit that works in the children of disobedience, and carries 
them captive at his will. But even within the Church his 
temptations are plied with unwearied diligence and lamentable 
success. Under the very eye of the apostles, and in spite both 
of their supernatural gifts and their unceasing watchfulness, 
he found it possible to deceive many ; and by dint of his subtle 
agency, not only has there been reared a huge system of anti- 
christian idolatry, but in the case of myriads living amid the 
clearest light, a worthless profession is ever being substituted 
for the life and power of godliness. When that agency, there- 
fore, with its fruits shall have been abolished, there will inevit- 
ably be a revolution previously unheard of in the general order 
and constitution of things. Governments as they now exist, 
the policy and business of the world as at present conducted, 
even the management and direction of the Church, which shall 
then have ceased to be distinct from the world, shall be anti- 
quated ; in many respects they shall have to take another aim, 
and work in another manner, than they have hitherto done ; 
because they shall have to be adapted to a state of things in 
which no longer ignorance, delusion, and falsehood predomi- 
nate, but the knowledge and love of the truth. 

Such, then, being the view of the millennial state presented 
to us in the twentieth chapter of the Apocalypse, taken in its 
plain and broad import, the question naturally arises, How is 
it to be brought about and maintained ? What is indicated as 
to the means and agencies by which such extraordinary results 
are to be accomplished? To say nothing of the operations 
going before, and preparing the way for the introduction of 
this state — which have been discussed in a previous chapter — 
there are two leading features in the millennial vision itself, 
the two circumstances last noticed, which must be regarded as 
of the nature of means or agencies, and must be understood, if 
not themselves to possess, at least to involve in the way of 
inseparable accompaniment, whatever of vital influence or 
efficient working may be necessary. 



452 THE PEOPHETICAL FUTUEE OF 

(1.) The first instrumentality refen*ed to is the binding of 
Satan : *'And I saw an angel," St. John writes, " come down 
from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit, and a great 
chain in his hand. And he laid hold on the dragon, that old 
serpent, which is the devil and Satan, and bound him a thou- 
sand years ; and cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him 
up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations 
no more till the thousand years should be fulfilled ; and after 
that he must be loosed a little season." That this description 
is, in respect to the form, figurative, can admit of no doubt ; 
for the actual performance of such material operations as those 
here connected with the key, the chain, and the seal, are obvi- 
ously incompatible with the nature of the being to whom they 
relate. A spirit without bodily parts cannot possibly be the 
subject of such gross and mechanical treatment. But as a 
finite being, subject to the conditions of space and time, he 
may, doubtless, be confined within a definite region ; confined 
as strictly as if he were actually chained in a prison-house, 
with the door sealed by the hand of Omnipotence to prevent 
the possibility of egress. And such may be the meaning here. 
The binding of Satan may denote a local and personal incar- 
ceration of the prince of darkness within the region designated 
by the bottomless pit ; or it may indicate that in respect to his 
cause and operations in the world, it shall be as if by forcible 
arrestment and location in such a region he were prevented 
from taking part in them. Which of these two senses should 
be preferred will depend upon the question. Whether the rep- 
resentations given us of Satan in this book, and in Scripture 
generally, are mainly of a personal or of a relative description % 
Whether they refer to Satan as an individual, or to the rela- 
tion in which he stands through his workings to the Church 
and the world ? ]N"ow that it is the latter, and not the former, 
may be rendered evident by a few plain considerations. 

It is in perfect accordance with the economy practiced by 
Scripture in its supernatural communications, and the strictly 
moral design with which it makes them, that it should be very 
sparing in its intimations respecting the personal history of 
Satan, and should give prominence only to what concerns his 



THE CHUKCH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 453 

power and interest among men. There is, therefore, an ante- 
cedent presumption that the knowledge imparted will be 
chiefly, if not exclusively, of a relative description. And when 
we look to the communications actually made, we soon per- 
ceive that unless they are contemplated in this light they stand 
in irreconcilable opposition to each other. Thus, at a certain 
period of our Lord's ministry, he declared that he saw Satan 
fall like lightning from heaven ; at another and later period, 
he speaks of Satan being judged and cast out, (namely, from 
the world ;) while in the second chapter of the Apocalypse he 
is represented as having his seat at Smyrna; then, in chapter 
twelfth, as being, in consequence of our Lord's perfect obedience 
unto death and ascension up on high, cast out of heaven, and 
brought down to the earth ; yet again, in this twentieth chap- 
ter, as shut up in the bottomless pit ; while in 2 Peter ii, 4, the 
whole company of fallen angels, inclusive, doubtless, of their 
chieftain, are declared to have been, from the very period of 
their fall, thrust down to hell, and under chains of darkness 
reserved unto judgment. It is impossible, excepting on the 
most arbitrary and forced suppositions, to bring such statements 
into harmony, if they are understood absolutely, and applied 
simply to the jpersonelle of Satan. But viewed as symbolical 
representations of his position and influence in relation to man- 
kind, the whole becomes perfectly intelligible ; and the several 
changes of position indicated in respect to height and depth, 
heaven and earth, confinement and release, only mark the dif- 
ferent stages of the power he exercises, and the cause he main- 
tains in the world. 

Such, on a still further account, must be the view we adopt 
of the description given of Satan in the vision before us. In 
it, as in the descriptions generally of this book, a symbolical 
element predominates. The characters delineated in them all 
are representative, rather than individual and personal ; and 
Satan is no more to be considered apart from the legions of 
darkness, and the instruments of evil generally, than the beast 
from its different embodiments in the worldly kingdoms, or 
the woman and the whore from the parties they respectively 
symbolized. Satan, therefore, comes into view here simply as 



454 THE PEOPHETICAL FUTUKE OF 

the representative of tlie devilisli power and agencies in the 
world ; and the disposition often shown by wiiters on the 
Apocalypse, to consider the binding of Satan in a strictly per- 
sonal light, is bnt another example of the intermingling of the 
literal with the symbolical, which has so greatly retarded the 
proper understanding of the prophetical Scriptures. 

Taking, then, the description of Satan's being bound with 
chains, and shut into the bottomless pit, in a relative sense, we 
have in it a symbolical representation of the utterly prostrate 
condition to which at and during the millennium his interest 
in the world shall be reduced. It goes down, as it were, to the 
lowest hell. At first the adversary had appeared altogether in 
the ascendant ; his dwelling seemed to be in heavenly places ; 
such commanding sway had he obtained over the minds of 
men and the affairs of time. He is compelled to stoop, how- 
ever, from his lofty elevation by the accomplishment of our 
redemption, and the ascension of the Son of man to the right 
hand of the Father. But though thenceforth crippled in his 
power, and reduced to a lower sphere, he still wields a mighty 
influence, and sustains a vast dominion in the world. He does 
so partly by giving a new and more Christian-like form to the 
beastly power of the world, and partly by the corruption of 
the Church through the formation of the great apostasy. Here 
again, however, he is destined to another downfall. The 
building he has labored with such power and dexterity to raise, 
at length gives way under the advancement of truth and right- 
eousness. The judgment of heaven alights on its different 
parts : Babylon, or the corrupt Church, first going into perdi- 
tion, then in close succession the beast and the false prophet. 
One abyss receives them all ; and with their descent thither, 
the adversary has his dominion overthrown also upon the earth, 
and is consigned as to a miserable and inactive bondage in the 
nether world. In each stage of the downward history all is at 
once symbolical and relative, and is consequently framed ac- 
cording to the appearances of things. At every step in the 
process we must explain, it was as if Satan were in such a 
positio7i, as if now he were occupying such a sj>here. And 
hence in what respects the last stage, his place during the 



THE CHURCH AKD KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 455 

thousand years' reign, it is the comparative rather than the 
absolute annihilation of his power and influence that must be 
understood. His cause on the earth shall be gone. He shall 
no longer have a distinct party to represent him, or a fitting 
agency to ply his devices and prosecute his designs. It will be 
as if he had altogether lost his influence among the generations 
of mankind, though, since men shall still be in the flesh, and 
death shall still work, and a liability shall still exist to decep- 
tion and apostasy, his connection with the world cannot be 
wholly destroyed. It will survive, but only — as the cause 
of God in the past times of the world's corruption — in a 
mystery. 

From what has been said of the nature of the representation 
before us, it follows that the binding of Satan, when viewed in 
respect to millennial means and agencies, is much more of a 
negative than of a positive nature. It will appear in the with- 
drawal of manifold temptations to evil, and the cessation of 
plans and operations which had for their object the encourage- 
ment of ungodliness and crime. But that very cessation and 
withdrawal must itself be a result. It will be the supplanting 
of falsehood by the prevalence of truth; the abolition of dark- 
ness by the difiusion of light ; the removal of what is in itself 
evil, or tends to evil, by the love and practice of what is pure 
and lovely, and of good report. The kingdom of Satan, it 
must be remembered, belongs not to the physical but to the 
moral sphere. The foundation on which it rests is sin ; and 
wherever the occasions and inducements to sin are resisted, 
there also the devil is worsted — ^he plies in vain his machina- 
tions, his weapons of war have perished. But to render such a 
resistance general in the world, there will necessarily be re- 
quired a direct and powerful agency of good. There must be 
influences from above, and through these, states of mind, social 
habits, and arrangements, brought into play, which shall on 
every hand counterwork the wiles of Satan, and give effect to 
the pure and beneficent Spirit of the Gospel of Christ. 

(2.) It is in the other feature of the description that we are 
to look for these more direct and positive agencies, by which 
the comparative perfection of the millennial state is to be 



456 THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF 

secured. This, though in itself one, has a double representation 
in the vision. In the first instance it is described as a judging 
and reigning with Christ ; while afterward it is designated the 
first resurrection ; the one aspect, however, being involved in 
the other, and only rendering more prominent what had been 
previously implied. ^'And I saw thrones," so the description 
runs in regard to the first aspect, " and they sat upon them ; 
and [I saw] the souls of them that were beheaded for the wit- 
ness (testimony) of Jesus and for the word of God ; and such as 
had not worshiped the beast, neither his image, neither had 
received his mark .upon their foreheads, or in their hands ; and 
they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years." Kow, 
that they are said to have lived and reigned, is obviously as 
much as that they lived again in order to reign. It implies 
their previous death, and their death from circumstances the 
very opposite of those now associated with their state ; because 
they had not power to reign, nor even to preserve themselves 
in life. The description, therefore, is plainly that of a martyr- 
company. It is so throughout, in the latter part as well as the 
first ; for the whole of the parties mentioned are represented as 
now living and reigning, in contrast to a previous time, when 
they had found it impracticable alike to live and to reign. 
But it becomes conclusively certain, and, indeed, must cease 
with all fair and sober interpreters to be a disputable point, 
when the description here is taken in connection with earlier 
passages, which it merely resumes, in Order to show the reverse 
of the picture that had been previously exhibited. The first of 
those passages is chap, vi, 9-11, where it is said, at the opening 
of the fifth seal, that there appeared " under the altar the souls 
of them that were slain for the word of God and the testimony 
which they held," manifestly the first company indicated in 
this millennial vision, who are said to have been beheaded, or 
slain, for the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. And 
in answer to the cry for judgment raised by those slain wit- 
nesses, it was intimated that " they should rest yet for a little 
season, until their fellow-servants also and their brethren, that 
should be killed, as they were, should be fulfilled." This is 
not less plainly the other company, who were to sufifer in the 



THE CHURCH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 457 

later stages of the beastly power's opposition to the cause of 
God, and whose case is more fully represented in subsequent 
portions of the book. We find it in chap, xiii, 15, where it is 
written of those who would not receive the mark of the beast, 
nor worship his image, that power was given to the second 
beast to kill them ; and again in chap, xvii, 6, where Babylon, 
the antichristian power of later times, more peculiarly embod- 
ied in the papacy, is described as being even drunk with the 
blood of the saints and of the martyrs of Jesus. Referring 
now to those previous delineations, and embracing the whole 
line of confessors and martyrs, the vision given to the apocalyp- 
tist of the occupants of the millennial thrones includes such as 
had not worshiped the beast, nor had received his mark, 
together with those who, at an early period, had been beheaded 
for the word of God and for the testimony of Jesus. So that 
the description tells simply of the confessors and martyrs living 
anew, and, instead of dying as formerly for the cause of Christ, 
reigning with him over a world at last brought into subjection 
to the truth of God.* 

In what sense, then, is it, that the martyrs previously referred 
to as persecuted and slain are here represented as living anew 
and reigning as kings ? Is the description to be understood of 
such persons individually and properly ? or is it to be under- 
stood of them symbolically, as representatives of the cause and 
kingdom of Christ ? Many reasons and counter-reasons have 
been presented in answer to these questions ; of which, however, 
the greater part determine nothing either way. But there are 
two considerations which to our own mind are perfectly decisive ; 
and the rather so, as they are considerations which the simplest 
readers of the Apocalypse are capable of discovering and rest- 

* This seems now to be generally admitted by those who yet differ widely on 
other points; compare, for example, Dr. Brown's "Second Advent," Part I, chap- 
ter 10, and Mr. Birks's "Outlines of Prophecy," pp. 108-110. We are, therefore, 
the more surprised, that such a writer as Auberlen should fail here so much in 
apprehending the connection of the passage, and the character of the representation, 
as to interpret only the first part of the martyrs, and the second of all who did 
not belong to the whore ; true Christians generally. In one sense, no doubt, they 
are included, but no more in connection with the one portion of the martyr-com- 
pany than the other. 



458 THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF 

ing in, as well as the most subtle and learned. The first is, 
that if the souls of the martyrs are to be viewed in an individ- 
ual, then they must also be taken in an exclusive respect. It 
must be held that those, and those only, who had suffered unto 
death in the cause of the Gospel are to rise again and reign 
during the millennium ; for individuals of that precise class 
having the honor assigned them, those not belonging to it must 
be understood to have been purposely omitted. But then the 
class is so comparatively limited in number, and so palpably 
distinguishes those who compose it from other genuine believ- 
ers by the accidents of their history rather than by the essen- 
tial characteristics of their state, that to confine the regency of 
the millennial age to them were to run counter to the whole 
genius of the Gospel. It would exclude the Apostle John him- 
self from any share in the honor, since he was not beheaded for 
the testimony of Jesus, nor, we have reason to think, were the 
apostles generally, and the first evangelists in the Church. We 
hold, therefore, the partial and arbitrary character of this inter- 
pretation to be fatal to it ; understood of individuals, the exclu- 
sive bearing of the description is as legitimate and necessary 
as the inclusive one, and then not Christian believers, but only 
Christian martyrs, must be destined to live again and reign in 
the millennium. 

There is another point, however, in this view of the descrip- 
tion, which is still more decisive against it ; namely, its contra- 
riety to the general style of the representations of this Book, 
and in particular to that of the earlier portions referred to in 
the very terms of the description. In unison with the ecstatic 
condition of the prophet, and the mode of revelation which was 
by vision, the scenes are throughout ideal as to the form they 
assume ; and the characters that appear in them are in conse- 
quence described symbolically and representatively, not indi- 
vidually and personally. Thus the royal and conquering hero 
in the first seal is not the personal Saviour, but the cause and 
people that have him for their living head ; it is personified 
Christianity in all its compass and completeness. In like 
manner, the woman in the twelfth chapter is not properly or 
directly the Yirgin Mary, as is plain from the woman's seed 



THE CHURCH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 459 

being used as a comprehensive term for the whole of the elect 
Church ; it is this Church itself which can only at most be 
regarded as having for the moment found a concentrated repre- 
sentation in the mother of Jesus. That the same holds of the 
vision in the fifth seal respecting the souls under the altar 
seems so manifest, that it is difficult to understand how it 
should ever have been contemplated otherwise. Their position 
alone as seen under the altar is conclusive of the sense in which 
it is to be taken ; it shows the description to be that entirely 
of an ideal scene, in which the animal souls (corresponding to 
the life-blood of the ancient victims) of the martyred witnesses 
appeared in the place of sacrifice, their righteous blood that had 
been poured out there crying to heaven for vengeance. It is 
quite frivolous, therefore, to insist upon the term souls being 
often used to denote persons ; no one doubts that it is ; but the 
question is, can it be so taken here ? In the midst of a scenic 
and symbolic representation, in which certainly it is not a lit- 
eral altar, nor a literal cry for judgment, nor literal robes of 
glory that are spoken of, are the souls that form the center of 
the whole to be understood in the literal and personal sense ? 
They manifestly cannot be so understood without arbitrarily 
interchanging the literal with the symbolical, and destroying 
all certainty of the interpretation. The souls seen in the ideal 
region under the altar simply represent those who, during the 
struggling and depressed period of Christ's kingdom, had to 
bear reproach and suffering unto death on account of it. And 
so again, here, the souls once sacrificed and slain, but now liv- 
ing and enthroned, represent the party that had been persecuted 
unto blood, risen at length to the dominion, not only possessed 
of fresh life, but invested with kingly power and authority. 
Should it be asked, whether the party so represented must not, 
however, be viewed as composed of the same individuals ? we 
reply, that the question here is not properly of individuals, but 
of a collective body, and of a continuous history. It might as 
well be asked, whether the witnesses in the eleventh chapter, 
who represent the Church during the whole period of her earn- 
est contending for the truth of the Gospel, were the same at 
the close as at the beginning ? Or, whether the beast was the 



460 THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OP 

same in the later forms and manifestations of the worldly 
power as in the earlier ? Or, whether the whore was the same 
when she received her doom, as when she entered on her career 
of backsliding and apostasy ? In all cases of this description 
there is, and must be, a continuity in the imagery employed ; 
the future as to its essential elements must be identified with 
the past, in order to show that it is the same cause which is 
proceeding, the same interests that are involved. And pre- 
cisely as here the once beheaded souls are seen rising to life 
and reigning, so in earlier and closely related visions the two 
witnesses appear as first slain, then coming to life again and 
ascending to heaven, and the holy apostles and prophets are 
called to rejoice over Babylon, as being avenged in her destruc- 
tion, (chap, xviii, 20,) although they lived before the apostasy 
represented by Babylon had even assumed a formal existence 
in the world. 

We are compelled, therefore, by a regard to the scenic and 
symbolic character of the representations in the Apocalypse, 
and by the necessity of avoiding what would otherwise war 
with the great principles of the Gospel, to take the souls 
here described as passing from the death of martyrdom to the 
possession of thrones, *not in an individual, but in an ideal and 
representative sense. In their position and aspect, as formerly 
seen by the apostle, they formed a fitting and impressive image 
of the Church and cause of Christ, when struggling for exist- 
ence and striving unto blood for the testimony they held ; now, 
they not less fitly image the same Church and cause every- 
where triumphant, appearing, as they do, not under the rod of 
oppression, but upon thrones of judgment ; not as sheep for the 
slaughter, but holding at command the sovereignty and domin- 
ion of the world. It is simply to mark the contrast in its full 
extent, that the description in the Apocalypse takes the form 
of the martyred host rising to life and glory. In Daniel, on 
the other hand, where the same representation in substance is 
given, but where it assumes a more general and outward form, 
the form of a contest for dominion between the kingdoms of 
earth and the kingdom of heaven, the issue of the contest nat- 
Tirally presents itself under the image of the judged becoming 



THE CHURCH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 461 

the judges, or of the saints possessing the kingdom and exer- 
cising the dominion nnder the whole heaven. These saints 
in Daniel are no other than the martyrs in the Apocalypse ; 
and it is only from the demands of the symbolical representa- 
tions in the two places respectively, that a diversity in the form 
to that limited extent prevails. 

But if such be the true interpretation of this part of the 
vision, why, it may still be asked, should such emphasis be laid 
on the scene described as a resurrection ? " They lived and 
reigned with Christ," it is said of the souls, " a thousand years ; 
but the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand 
years were finished. Blessed and holy is he that hath part in 
the first resurrection : on such the second death hath no power, 
but they shall be priests of Grod and of Christ, and shall reign 
with him a thousand years." Why designate the event re- 
ferred to so explicitly and repeatedly as not only a resurrection 
but the first resurrection, and distinguish between the dead 
then raised and the rest of the dead, who are not to be raised 
till the close of the millennial era, if the description is not to 
be understood of definite individuals, but symbolically of the 
representatives of Christ's cause and kingdom among men? 
Simply, we answer, to mark the greatness of the moral resusci- 
tation that is to take place, the mighty and permanent impres- 
sion it is to make upon the world, and the near approach that 
is to be efiected by it toward the final issues of the kingdom. 
In these respects it will be immeasurably superior to every- 
thing that has been known or experienced within the sphere of 
the earthly life. In describing it the prophet must borrow his 
imagery from the higher life to come ; it is the first resurrec- 
tion, because it seemed to his illuminated eye to partake more 
of the immortal vigor and bloom of the resurrection-state than 
of the sickliness and languor which have liitherto characterized 
the Church on earth. Such glowing delineations of the nearer 
future by the characteristics of the higher and more remote are 
not unknown in prophecy. The prophet Ezekiel, when fore- 
telling what relatively occupies the same place in his predic- 
tions with the scene before us, finds nothing suitable but the 
coming resurrection ; it is under this image, wrought out after 



462 THE PKOPHETICAL FUTURE OF 

Lis peculiar fashion into manifold details, that lie portrays the 
resuscitation that was to come upon his peeled and scattered 
countrymen.* It is under the same image that the Apostle 
Paul, in no ecstatic mood, depicts the result of Israel's conver- 
sion : " What," he asks, " shall their reception be, but life 
from the dead ? " How much more, then, might such a style 
of representation be used of the time, when the universal 
Church, freed at length from the thraldom of the antichristian 
yoke, and recovered from the slumber and filth of ages, is to 
burst forth in the freshness and beauty of a divine life ? When 
all her members shall reflect the holy grace and energy of her 
glorified Head ? and these members grown so many in num- 
ber, and so powerful in influence, that every sphere of life 
shall be penetrated by their agency, and every region of earth 
be willingly obedient to their sway ? When such a scene is 
realized, shall not the first stas-e of the resurrection-life seem to 
be reached ? Shall not the world at length have the visible 
pledge of a blessed immortality ? f 

Yiewed thus, the language of the vision has its perfect justi- 
fication both in the nature of the things described and in the 
usage of prophecy. And were it not for the mistaken realism 
which is ever forcing itself in upon even the better class of in- 
terpreters, and disturbing the harmony of the divine symbol- 
ism, no material difficulty would be found in what remains of 



* Indeed, the whole that is written here in chap, xx, 1-10, is but the resump- 
tion with reference to Christian times and relations of the predictions in Ezekiel 
xxxvii-xxxix, where there is first the revived state imaged by the resurrection ; 
then the happy and peaceful reign under the presidency of the new David ; and 
finally, the temporary interruption of this state of things by the invasion of G-og 
and his warlike hordes. 

f It is no argument against this view to say, that the words, "this is the first 
resurrection," are introduced by way of explanation, and cannot, therefore, be 
imderstood symbolically. For we find similar explanations constantly occurring in 
the Apocalypse ; as in this very chapter, "the lake of fire, this is the second 
death;" chap, xiv, 4, "these are they which are not defiled with women, for they 
are virgins;" chap, xi, 8, "the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and 
Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified;" chap, iv, 5, "seven lamps of fire, 
which are the seven spirits of God." In all these, and various others, there is a 
symbolical element in the explanation as well as in the thing explained ; and it is 
by the whole character and connection of the vision, that the precise import of the 
descriptions is to be determined. 



THE CHURCH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 463 

the description. Let it be only kept steadily in view that in 
the apostle's account of what he saw and heard in the visions 
of God we have an ideal delineation of the great and heart- 
stirring reality just described, snch a delineation as might 
convey to the Church beforehand the most correct and vivid 
notion of its character, and it will readily be perceived why 
he should pronounce those peculiarly blessed and holy who 
should have part in the first resurrection, and should also represent 
the rest of the dead as not living till the thousand years were 
finished. The change is to be so great and deep, there is to 
be such an inwardness and strength in the spiritual life of the 
millennial era, that not only a resurrection, but a resurrection 
of the most faithful and devoted of Christ's followers, seemed 
necessary to characterize the event. It should be as if the 
flower alone of the Church, her noblest exemplifications of 
holy zeal and self-sacrificing love had come to life again, and 
entered on their immortal career. ll^Tothing any longer should 
appear of the lukewaiTn who had hung midway between flesh 
and spirit, Christ and the world, and in times of temptation 
had ever been ready to fall away ; far less of those who had 
openly espoused the cause of ungodliness and soiled their gar- 
ments in the pollutions of the world. At the millennial era 
there shall be no resurrection of such mongrel characters, 
none at least till the period commenced by that era shall be 
drawing to its close. Then the other dead shall have their 
representation also, and the diversities that have appeared in 
the past shall be found embodied anew in the lives and actions 
of professing Christians. I^ot so, however, during the millen- 
nium itself. Then there shall be only life in its fullest vigor 
and efliorescence, and the Church shall present the aspect of a 
body fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an 
army with banners. Hence the eulogium, " Blessed and holy 
is he that hath part in the first resurrection : on such the 
second death hath no power :" that is, they shall be all visibly 
of the right stamp, not like men standing on slippery places, 
and leaving it doubtful whether heaven or hell might at 
length come to be their portion; no, but men bo sincere in 
heart, so consistent in behavior, so clearly and transparently 



46^ THE PROPHETICAL FUTUEE OF 

CliristiaE, that no room shall be left for doubt in regard either 
to their blessed condition or theii' orlorions destiny.* 

This perfectly harmonizes also with the other part of the 
description which represents 'the millennial worthies as 
" priests of God and of Christ, and as reigning with him." 
Hoyal power shall belong to them, bnt not snch as the world 
is wont to associate with the name. It will be the royalty of 
priests who, in their kingly administration, shall do spiritual 
and holy service to the Lord. The ensigns of their dignity 
shall not be stately equipages, nor shall carnal weapons be the 
instruments of their swav. Thev shall deal with the higher 
elements of power, such as are fitted to reach the springs of 
action rather than to direct its outward courses, and so they 
shall do their ''great works upon the unforced obedience of 
men," the noblest proof of a spii'itual agency and a 
divine calling. But how they shall actually do so, by what 
steps they shall themselves attain to this , priestly power, what 
special organizations, when attained, it may lead them to 
form, throucjh what modes of influence and channels of work- 
ino^ it mav diffuse itself in the world, we can as vet form no 
distinct conception. It is enough for us to know that it shall 
be, and that the residue of the Spirit is with the Lord to ac- 
complish the result. Has he spoken, and shall he not do it ? 
Has he purposed, and shall he not accomplish it ? 

III. Having now considered what is written of the thousand 
years' reign, we return to the question, in what relation does it 
stand to the coming of the Lord ? Of much that has been 
advanced upon this question it is not our intention to take 
any notice, being persuaded that a multitude of things have 
been pressed into the field from a misapprehension of the 
proper nature and province of prophecy, and from a desire to 
extract from it an amount of light respecting the precise form 
and lineaments of the future which it was never intended to 

* It is only by understanding thus •'the rest of the dead." who liyed not till 
the close of the thousand years, of classes of characters, that the uuiformitj of the 
symbolical description is preserved. And to interpret it of the remnant men- 
tioned in chap, xis, 21. or of the dead generally as to their personal resurrection 
is to bring in a realistic element out of place in the midst of a STmbolical de- 
lineation. 



THE CHURCH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 465 

give. If in the first part of our inquiry we have not suc- 
ceeded in showing the impropriety of such a treatment of 
prophecy, and if the proofs which have subsequently been 
exhibited of the erroneous and contradictory results to which 
it inevitably leads, have failed to produce conviction, nothing 
that could be said now on this particular phase of the pro- 
phetic future could be of any avail. 

But from what has been already stated respecting the mil- 
lennium itself, as well as from the kind of providences which 
must be necessary to bring it into accomplishment, there can 
be no doubt that it must be in a very special manner con- 
nected with the power and presence of the Lord. The apos- 
tles spake of him as coming and being present when the 
Gospel through their instrumentality and the working of 
God's providence took effect in particular places, and when 
the kingdom of God was transferred from Jewish to Gentile 
soil. But the operations by which such things were accom- 
plished could not halve afforded nearly such marked indica- 
tions of his presence, or such proofs of his controlling agency 
and power, as must appear in the world-wide movements and 
changes of which we have been treating. The subversion of 
antichristian falsehood and domination, the bringing to naught 
of the world's power and wisdom, the abolition of all that in 
the social and political condition of things is opposed to truth 
and justice, and along with these, the formal elevation of the 
pious and God-fearing portion of mankind to the place of 
influence and authority, and the establishment through all 
lands of the pure and benign principles of the Gospel : such 
things, when they take place, cannot but betoken a manifesta- 
tion of the presence and coming of the Lord far surpassing 
what has yet appeared in the past, if we except the period of 
his actual sojourn among men. Besides, when we take into 
account what human nature now is, and how much its in- 
stinctive cleaving to the dust, together with the vail that hides 
from its view the realities of a higher sphere, operates as a 
hinderance to the work of grace among men, and to the practi- 
cal ascendency of the truth of God in the world, it cannot 

appear wonderful if there should be some nearer connection 

30 



4:Q6 THE PEOPHETICAL FUTURE OF 

establislied in the millennial period between the two regions 
of the divine kingdom. Without speculating much concern- 
ing the possibilities of things, we can conceive a mode of ad- 
ministration not impracticable which should bring into fuller 
realization than hitherto the word of oiu' Lord to Xathanael, 
" Hereafter ye shall see heaven opened, and the angels of God 
ascending and descending upon the Son of man," something 
whereby faith might become more like a living sense than it 
has ever been in any number of individuals or for any length 
of time in the same individuals during the past stages of the 
world's history. This, we say, might not seem impracticable, 
and might even appear needful when we think of the difficul- 
ties to be vanquished and the resistance to be overcome com- 
pared with the gigantic and blessed results that for so long a 
period are to be in progress. Indeed we can scarcely under- 
stand how such results can be effected unless supports of some 
sort are furnished to faith, and an insight is given into the 
spiritual and di\dne beyond what has been the common privi- 
lege of believers since the present dispensation began. But 
whatever may be justly anticipated in tliis direction, it ought 
to be looked for not so much, perhaps not all, in connection 
with any objective or visible manifestation on the Lord's part, 
but from subjective elevation on theirs. In so far as given it 
will be the property of faith, not of sight, and will come as 
the effect of a more copious outpouring of the Spirit, a be- 
stowal of grace so plentiful as to make gifts that have hitherto 
been rare comparatively common, and shall raise the recipients 
of them to such an elevation of soul, and such nearness of com- 
munion vrith heaven, that all who see them shall feel as if they 
saw the face of an ano^el. There is nothino^ in the constitution 
of the Church of Chi'ist or in the prophetic word to render 
such an enlargement of present grace and privilege improba- 
ble, much indeed to warrant and encourage the expectation of 
it. The more so, as it is plain that, entirely apart from the 
removal of external hinderances, or the supply of adventitious 
helps, there must be an operation of the Spirit of grace, of the 
most efficacious and persuasive kind, in order even to recon- 
cile the world to the rule of the saints, or to give it practical 



THE CHUKCH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST, 467 

effect. If there shall be power to make the people generally 
willing to obey, how much more of power, power to reach to 
the greater things of God, will be required for those who in 
such a time will be called to rule in the affairs of men, and 
ride on the high places of the earth ! And if it shall be the 
grand reaping-time for the world in the Spirit's work, of 
which till then the first-fruits only shall have been gathered, 
what must form the essential condition of its accomplishment 
so much as the nobler endowments of the Spirit, and his richer 
communications to the souls of men ! 

But that the glorified Redeemer should openly manifest 
himself to the world, and in the splendor of divine majesty 
should take visible possession of the throne, that what is 
known as distinctively the advent of the Son of man in glory, 
for the purpose of winding up the affairs, and bringing in the 
final results of his dispensation, that this is to precede the 
commencement of the millennial reign, and constitute its more 
important and distinguishing feature, we can by no means 
admit, for it seems to us in many respects at variance with 
the clearest revelations given on the subject, and incompati- 
ble with the constitution and order of things that shall then 
be brought into existence. We shall only glance at some of 
the more leading points. 

(1.) First of all, in the passage which beyond doubt contains 
the most explicit and detailed account of the millennium, this 
personal manifestation and local residence of Christ on earth 
is not mentioned. If it really were to have a place in the 
state of things then to exist, that place must unquestionably 
be a pre-eminent one ; it should, one would imagine, have 
formed the prominent feature in the description. But it is 
not once distinctly named. The reign of Christ is implied 
merely as forming the substratum and background of that 
which his people are to exercise. But it is the reign of this 
people themselves, the thrones set for thein to occupy, the 
royal priesthood they are to discharge, the high, blessed, and 
honorable condition they are to hold, these alone are the 
points which are prominently exhibited in the delineation. 
When the people of Christ are thus represented as possessing 



468 THE PEOPHETICAL FUTURE OF 

the kingdom, it must be because tbey are ostensibly to bear 
sway upon tbe earth ; the reins of government are to be in 
their hands. Then no doubt as Tvell as now the position they 
occupy shall have its root in their connection with Christ ; 
their rule, therefore, shall not be of an independent nature, 
but, as it is here described, a reigning with Christ, precisely as 
in their present state they live with Christ, and (spiritually) 
sit with him in heavenly places. As regards outward appear- 
ance, however, it is they who in the millennium are to consti- 
tute the dominant parties, while in an after-stage, the really 
culminating period of the world's history, when Christ is to 
appear and shine forth in his glory, they fall comparatively 
into the background, and it is he who takes the prominent 
place. Then by the excessive luster of his thi'one every other 
throne disappears ; all power and authority, life and blessing, 
center in him, and diffuse their influence on every side. Chap. 
XX, 11 ; xxi, 5, etc. 

(2.) A second argument against the visible manifestation 
and personal appearance of Christ at the millennium is de- 
rived from the account given in the Apocalypse of what is to 
precede and usher in the era. Its more immediate precursors 
are to be the execution of the doom of antichrist, the destruc- 
tion of the beast and the false prophet, or the overthrow gen- 
erally of the world's organized power and wisdom. The final 
conquest of the kingdoms that formed the earthly forces and 
adherents of those hostile parties had been represented in 
chap, xix, under the image of a royal rider on a white horse, 
going forth with his armies to bring the people under him. 
Such a rider cannot fail to suggest the thought of Christ, yet 
the representation is properly an ideal one, and exhibits the 
spirit rather than the exact form of the coming transactions. 
This is evident alone from the accompaniments of the chief 
personage — his white horse and splendid accouterments, his 
band of faithful and devoted attendants, and above all, the 
grand weapon employed in the conflict, the sharp sword going 
out of his mouth. This, we can have no doubt, is the word of 
truth, considered as a word of conviction and rebuke, wielded, 
however, as it ever is now, not by Christ directly and person- 



THE CHUECH AND KINGDOM OF CHEIST. 469 

ally, but through, the instrumentality of his faithful and 
devoted servants. Through them, therefore, as the immediate 
actors in the conflict, the victory is to be won. And so again 
in the overthrow of Babylon, or the destruction of the anti- 
christian apostasy, so far from any visible and overpowering 
display of Christ's divine glory being required to accomplish 
it, the kingdoms of the world themselves are represented as 
having a chief hand in the business, turning, as it is said, to 
hate the whore and to destroy her. (Chap, xvii, 16.) Their 
taking this part will by no means dissociate the event from 
Christ's personal agency, it will still be his doing ; and so, in 
2 Thess. ii, 8, it is expressly ascribed to. the breath of his 
mouth and the brightness of his coming. But since even 
worldly kingdoms are to be actively employed in effecting it, 
the coming spoken of cannot be that of the final advent or any 
external manifestation of Christ's power and glory. It must 
be such a coming as took place in pentecostal times, and the 
overturning that followed, through heathenish intervention, of 
apostate Judaism ; so that whether we look to the immediate 
precursors of the millennium, or to the distinctive features of the 
millennium itself, there seems nothing in the description that 
requires or properly admits of the manifested appearance and 
external glory of Christ. 

(3.) Thirdly, the hypothesis of the final advent before the 
millennium assumes an incongruous mixture of the two states 
of humiliation and glory, such a mixture as seems incompati- 
ble with the great principles of the divine administration. 
Looking either to these principles themselves or to the exem- 
plification that has been given of them in the past, there seems 
to be a gulf fixed between the two conditions. The things 
belonging to a state of humiliation cannot, excepting in mo- 
mentary periods and partial cases, intermingle with those 
belonging to the state of glory. The outward frame and con- 
stitution of the world is adapted to the present condition of its 
inhabitants, and if the one becomes essentially changed, the 
other must undergo a corresponding alteration. When Jesus 
entered on his state of glory he could no longer dwell on earth 
and make himself visible to men. Before this can fitly take 



470 THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF 

place the corruptible must have put on in corruption, tlie 
carnal be changed into the spiritual. Only when he comes 
to make all things new, and stamps them with the perfection 
of his divine work, will the world be prepared as the house of 
the glory of his kingdom. 

(4.) Again, the special acts more immediately associated in 
Scripture with the period of the second advent belong to the 
age subsequent to the millennium. Among tlie acts referred 
to must be placed in the first instance those of the general 
resurrection and the final judgment, both of which are here 
placed after the millennium, and described in the latter part 
of chap. XX. It is as clear as language can make it, that by 
St. John's account these events are both posterior to the mil- 
lennial age, and also peculiarly connected with the Lord's 
manifested presence and glory, and all opinions which attempt 
to get rid of these conclusions must be assigned to the region 
of speculation, not to that of fair and unbiased interpretation. 
The same order also is observed in the representations else- 
where found in Scripture. Another act of the same class is 
the solemnization of the bride's marriage with the Lamb. 
This in the Apocalypse is placed subsequent to the millen- 
nium, subsequent even to the general judgment. It is only 
after the period of conflict is entirely closed, and the final 
awards have been dispensed, that the holy city (as the Church 
is now called) appears descending out of heaven as a bride 
adorned for her husband. (Chap, xxi, 2.) At an earlier stage 
indeed she is spoken of as having made herself ready, and the 
time for her marriage is even said to have come. (Chap, xix, 7.) 
But the actual and formal realization of the espousals is only 
introduced afterward, and the previous notice of preparation 
and readiness must be understood simply of the great relative 
advance made toward the consummation. So marked was 
this at the period referred to that further delay in regard to 
the final issue seemed needless ; the union, so far as the exist- 
ing Church was concerned, might be consummated at once. 
Hence when we look to the representations given of it in 
Scripture we find the union spoken of as one that admits of a 
series of matrimonial solemnities. Even the first union of 



THE CHUECH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 471 

believers to Christ has sometimes the aspect of a marriage 
given to it. (Horn, vii, 4 ; Ephes. v, 32 ; Isa. liv, 5.) More 
commonly, however, the present relationship of the Chnrcli to 
Christ is described as that of a bride to the bridegroom, con- 
templating the marriage-nnion as an event yet in prospect. 
But at the glorious epoch of the millennium the things that 
concern her seemed to take such a mighty rise, the number, 
the holiness, the power and influence of her members appeared 
to mount so far above their former level, that the happy time 
for a consummation might already be said to have arrived. 
Yet if the Church should then seem ready, other things would 
not be so. The theater of bliss would be by no means ade- 
quately prepared for the full manifestation of the sons of God, 
and their joint participation with Christ in the highest honors 
of the kingdom. For this there is required not only a Church 
all glorious within, but a corresponding glory also without, a 
new heavens and a new earth. Sin in every form must be put 
down, the powers of evil must be driven from every depart- 
ment of nature and every sphere of life, the whole region of 
terrestrial things must again become very good, and then at 
length will the Lord dwell with men as at first, there being 
nothing any more to offend the eye of his holiness or to draw 
forth the visitations of his displeasure. Then will he find it 
possible to treat his redeemed as his proper s.pouse, and main- 
tain with them a free and blessed intercourse of love. But 
if so only then, a pre-millennial manifestation in glory, fol- 
lowed by his abiding and visible presence, cannot be justly 
looked for. 

On all these grounds the conclusion forces itself upon us, 
that whatever of spiritual elevation may be given to the Lord's 
people during the millennium, and whatever indications may 
be afforded them of his own peculiar nearness and presiding 
agency, as still the restitution of all things shall not then have 
fully come, so it will not be the time for the unvailed mani- 
festation of his presence, and his face-to-face communications 
with men on earth. This belongs to the period of final deliv- 
erance from evil, when everything in the natural and tlie 
spiritual world shall be stamped with the glory of the new 



472 THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF 

creation. And between the millennium and this ultimate 
period of blessing and glorj there lie, according to the repre- 
sentations of the Apocalypse, two great acts, the one forming 
the last phase of wickedness on the part of man, and the other 
the last phase of retributive justice, which shall be emphati- 
cally the judgment on the part of God. 

lY. The earlier of these great acts is presented in so abrupt 
and abbreviated a form as necessarily to suggest a reference to 
some preceding revelation. "When the thousand years are 
expired," it is said, " Satan shall be loosed out of his prison ; 
and shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four 
quarters [literally, corners] of the earth, Gog and Magog, to 
gather them together to battle ; the number of whom is as the 
sand of the sea. And they went up on the breath of the 
earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the 
beloved city ; and fire came down from God out of heaven, 
and devoured them. And the de\dl that deceived them was 
cast into the lake of fii'e and brimstone, where the beast and 
the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night 
for ever and ever." Were there not an earlier revelation, 
which this merely resumes and applies to post-millennial 
times, it would be inexplicable that the extraordinary names 
of Gog and Magog should have been thus suddenly intro- 
duced upon the scene without anything to indicate why such 
names should have been chosen to designate the heads of so 
vast a confederacy, or what should have moved either them to 
undertake, or others to concur in it. It is singular also that 
in the description of their hostile movement, while they are 
said to come up over the breadth of the earth, and to compass 
the camp of the saints and the beloved city, no mention had 
previously been made of the saints having pitched that camp, 
or of their possessing such a city. These obvious blanks in 
the vision before us can only be accounted for by an implied 
reference to a fim.damental passage in which materials should 
be found to supply what is here defective, and which rendered 
more explicit statements unnecessary. That passage, we can 
have no doubt, is the prophecy contained in Ezek. xxxviii and 
xxxix, which forms one of the most characteristic portions of 



THE CHURCH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 473 

Ezekiel's writings. Having endeavored to unfold its meaning 
in detail elsewhere,* it will be enough at present to exhibit its 
general bearing and import, and its natural adaptation to the 
use made of it in this portion of the Apocalypse. 

By its whole texture, the prophecy must be regarded as an 
ideal delineation of certain dangers and assaults, that might be 
expected to arise in the distant future against the cause and 
people of God, with the triumphant result in which it was to 
terminate. ' Amid all that is ideal in this delineation, there are 
some prominent features in the great conflict it portrays, which 
are so exhibited as to leave no room for doubt respecting them, 
and which it is more especially important here to bear in mind. 
1. The first has respect to the time of the conflict : it is not 
only assigned to the remote future, but is placed absolutely 
last in the series of struggles through which the covenant-peo- 
ple were destined to pass. The prophet had represented them, 
in the predictions going before, as delivered from all their ex- 
isting troubles, and raised above their hereditary enemies in 
the immediate neighborhood. He had spoken of the very best 
things in the past — the things on which their recollections 
loved to dwell — as having returned again, with more even than 
their former celebrity, and being settled also on firmer founda- 
tions. The new David has established the covenant in its full- 
ness of life and blessing ; the Lord himself is known to have 
his dwelling among them by the abundant peace and prosperity 
that was poured into their lot ; and the one thing that should 
arise to cloud for a moment the bright sunshine of future glory, 
was the extraordinary outbreak of hostile violence by the forces 
of Gog bursting over the land like a tempestuous blast. When 
this has passed away, the last form of evil has come and gone ; 
the heathen are utterly perished, and it is known throughout 
the world, that the Lord shall not again desert his people, nor 
hide his face from them any more. (Chap, xxxix, 28, 29.) Fu- 
ture visions speak only of the ultimate perfection and glory of 
the redeemed. 2. A second point in the delineation is the con- 
dition in which the covenant-people were contemplated as 
being when this assault took place, and which in a manner 

* "Commeutary on Ezokiel,'' P- 414, seq. 



474 THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF 

provoked it. They are described as dwelling in a state of 
secure peace ; so secnre, that no thought of danger seemed to 
cross their minds, nor was any external preparation made to 
meet it : the people were seen throughout the land dwelling at 
rest, inhabiting towns without walls, and villages that pos- 
sessed neither bars nor gates. Such a state manifestly bespoke 
the enjoyment of a long season of repose, and the entire disap- 
pearance from their neighborhood of any apparent elements of 
danger or annoyance. They had been so long and so com- 
pletely freed from these, that it had seemed needless to make 
any formal provision against their recurrence ; and so, defense- 
less in regard to outward weapons of assault, and strong only 
in resources of spiritual life and blessing, it seemed to the ene- 
mies, who had been eyeing them with jealousy, and mustering 
their forces for an attack, as if they should fall an easy prey 
into their hands. 3. Then thirdly, in respect to the enemies 
themselves, who thus thought and reasoned, they were, as 
might be inferred from what has now been said, hostile powers 
from the distance ; powers that had hitherto lain, as it were, 
out o-f sight, and now for the first time were gathered from the 
most remote regions, and brought up in battle array by a pow- 
erfal and enterprising leader. This leader is described under 
the ideal name of Grog, of the land of Magog, prince of Rosh, 
Mesech, and Tubal ; and as having in his train, besides the peo- 
ple more immediately belonging to his own northern latitudes, 
the far-off Ethiopians and Libyans on one side ; and on the 
other the Armenians, the Persians, and the Cimmerians of 
Crim Tartary. Even the nearest of these tribes was at a consid- 
erable distance from the Land of Israel ; and some of them 
were in the very corners of the earth, alike remote from each 
other and from the people of God. They were, therefore, the 
fit representatives of a hostile movement to be made from quar- 
ters morally at the greatest distance from the kingdom of God, 
and thence disposed to imagine that, by mere dint of carnal 
weapons and numerical force, they might carry it as by storm 
over the children of righteousness and peace. 4. Finally, the 
result proves them to be entirely wrong in their calculations ; 
for as the assault was not provoked by any defection on the 



THE CHUECH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 475 

part of the Lord's people, so they have him for a shield of 
safety ; with fire from heaven he consumes the adversaries, and 
causes it to be known that now the right must prevail ; that 
the meek and pure, not the violent and rapacious, must possess 
the earth, and dwell in it for ever. 

Such are the main features of the prophecy which, with cer- 
tain characteristic differences, the divine Seer of the Apoca- 
lypse resumes and applies to the period immediately subsequent 
to the millennium. The differences are not such as materially 
to affect the nature of the vision, or the relative place and bear- 
ing of the things disclosed in it. In accordance with his more 
advanced position, and the deeper insight possessed by him 
into the spiritual world, the later prophet supplies at the outset 
a link that is omitted by the earlier ; he connects all with the 
powerful agency of the prince of darkness. Satan at the com- 
mencement of the new period is loosed from his prison, and 
goes out to deceive the nations which are in the four corners of 
the earth ; that is, fresh opportunity and a larger scope is, by 
some turn in the affairs of Providence, to be given him for ply- 
ing his temptations and influencing the minds of un regenerate 
men. And though the parties whom his wiles succeed in stir- 
ring into rebellion are not here connected, as in Ezekiel, with 
any definite localities, and are represented, not as mustered 
and led by Gog, the prince of Magog, but as themselves collect- 
ively Gog and Magog, (for the purpose, no doubt, of showing 
more clearly that such names are to be understood in an ideal 
manner,) yet the substance of the revelation entirely corre- 
sponds with that of Ezekiel. First, the time assigned for the 
fearful conflict is the remoter future, the closing stages of the 
present dispensation; after which nothing remains for the 
Church but the final recompenses of blessing and glory. The 
mighty revival and spread of living godliness destined to char- 
acterize the latter days represented by the resurrection of the 
martyrs, and their thousand years' reign among men, corre- 
sponding to the resurrection-scene in Ezekiel, (chapter xxxvii,) 
with the long period of holy peace and prosperity that was to 
follow, this has already, in the prospective outline of St. John, 
come and fulfllled its course ; and before the final extirpation 



476 THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF 

of evil, room is afforded for but one more, and, as it were, a 
spasmodic effort of the adversary to regain his lost ascendency. 
The general condition^ in like manner, of the cause and peo- 
ple of God, in the period preceding the hostile assault, was evi- 
dently one of secure and tranquil enjoyment. So complete had 
been the ascendency of good, and so long the flow of outward 
peace and prosperity, that no thought of evil was likely to have 
entered the bosoms of men, or any outward munitions of de- 
fense and safety to have been provided against its possible 
occurrence. The followers of the Lamb have reigned for ages 
in their character as saints ; by the moral weight of holy prin- 
ciple and works of righteousness they have borne sway in the 
affairs of men ; and realizing on this account their connection 
with the omnipotent grace and sure guardianship of Heaven, 
they could scarcely fail to discard from their minds all care for 
other means of protection. But carnal minds, if any such still 
existed, must be expected to judge otherwise ; to their view 
the spiritual rule of saints, simply because trusting so much to 
divine supports, and intent mainly on the employment of moral 
agencies, could not but appear to be deficient in solid strength ; 
and this, coupled with the joyous security and benignant satis- 
faction everywhere diffused, might well be conceived enough 
to prompt the idea of a gigantic effort to overturn the dynasty 
of righteousness. The more naturally might such a project 
come to be entertained, if it should happen that in process of 
time the power of godliness to some extent should fall into 
decay, and the love of many wax cold. But this is precisely 
what we have already seen to be indicated in verse 5, by " the 
rest of the dead living not again till the thousand years were 
finished." * It intimates that other characters than those who 
belonged to the highest sphere of the Christian life, who were 
ready alike to die for Christ and to reign with him, should 
appear on the stage ; that when the mighty flood of millennial 
zeal and devotedness should have spent its force, there should 
come, not, indeed, a general apostasy, or corrupt worldly admix- 
ture, as of old, but a season of comparative languor, in which, 
many should be found to want the spiritual elevation that as a 

® See page 464. 



THE CHURCH AND KINGDOM OF CHRIST. 477 

whole is to distinguish the saints of the millennium. What 
more natural, then, when such a relaxation might become 
apparent in the higher qualities of a divine life, that the awe 
in which the world had been held by such living piety and 
pre-eminent worth should give way, and that the hope of 
regaining the ascendency should spring up afresh in the slum- 
bering remains of the world's ungodliness? Then, as to the 
quarters where these remains might exist, or by what means 
they might be stirred into such combined action and desperate 
hostility as the words of the vision indicate, nothing very 
definite can be drawn from the description of the apostle. But 
the corresponding vision of Ezekiel entitles us to infer that 
they will be gathered from the outskirts ; not of course the 
literal but the moral outskirts of the habitable globe : the 
regions of society, or spheres of life, which even the millennial 
agency of Christian love shall have failed to penetrate, and win 
over to the interests of righteousness. We cannot conceive 
that these would be very numerous or extensive during at least 
the better and brighter period of the millennial reign ; but they 
will naturally grow with the decline of its fervor and activity 
toward the close, and when roused to action by the subtle mal- 
ice of Satan, (through what forms of delusion we know not,) 
they will ultimately present the aspect of an innumerable host 
compassing the camp of the saints and the beloved city ; that 
is, they will then virtually place the people of God throughout 
the world in the same relative position that Israel of old was, 
when surrounded with enemies in the field, or beleaguered in 
their capital city. The cause of God will seem for a time to 
be brought by them into peril. However, it shall only be for 
a time ; the danger shall soon pass away. Its appearance shall 
but serve to rekindle the zeal and devotedness of the people of 
God. The martyr-spirit shall once more revive in all its en- 
ergy of life and action, and like hallowed fire sent down from 
heaven, (for we cannot think of literal fire any more than of a 
literal camp and city on the one side, or a literal Gog and 
Magog on the other,) shall consume the carnal elements, and 
defeat the hostile machinations through which the confederacy 
of evil hoped to prevail. Thus ends the last great struggle of 



4.78 THE PROPHETICAL FUTURE OF 

tlie adversary ; and having been allowed to make Ms final 
attempt against the followers of the Lamb, and failed in doing 
so, his doom of utter and hopeless exclusion from the domain 
of earthly affairs is carried into effect. As formerly the beast 
and false prophet, his earthly representatives, so now the devil 
himself is cast into the lake of fire ; the original sentence 
against the tempter is executed to the full, and his head utterly 
bruised. 

Y. In the midst of this general rout and confusion of the adver- 
sary and his host, or immediately subsequent to it, there comes 
the end of all things as regards the present frame and constitu- 
tion of the world, and the fixing of the final destinies of all 
who have had part in its eventful history. This is introduced 
in the visions of the apostolic seer, by the appearance of a 
great white throne, (emblem of the pure and glorious majesty 
of the divine Judge,) and one sitting on it who is identified 
with God. (Kev. xx, 11, 12.) Before the face of this eternal 
King, earth and heaven (the old frame and constitution of 
things) were seen to flee away, and the dead, small and great, 
stood before Grod to be judged by their deeds. The process of 
judgment is described by the books being opened, those, 
namely, which were viewed as containing the record of all 
they had done and said during their lives on earth ; and along 
with these memorials of good and evil in the past, the book of 
life, wherein are recorded the names of the elect from the 
foundation of the world. Of the latter class none can be 
allowed to perish with the wicked ; they shall all have their 
portion in the 'New Jerusalem, however diversified may be 
their respective lots there ; since these must be determined by 
the other things concerning them that may be found written in 
the books. It is impossible to understand all this of any thing 
short of an absolute universality : the language of symbols can 
have no definite meaning, if such descriptions are not to be 
understood as comprising the entire race of humanity in the 
whole of its two grand divisions of the saved and the lost. 
And the more so, as (in verse 13) every region and receptacle 
of the dead is said to be ransacked for the purpose of having 
the assize complete ; not the earth merely, or the world in its 



THE CHUECH AND KIKGDOM OF CHRIST. 479 

more conspicuous and settled parts, wliicli did not need to be 
particularly named, but tlie sea also, whicb is identified with 
whatever is deep, mysterious, turbulent ; and death and hades 
themselves, the ideal lords and possessors of the departed, 
wherever their realms might extend ; all now are compelled to 
resign their charge, that the judgment of God may proceed to 
the completion of its work. And when these ideal powers, 
death and hades, as well as those whose names were not found 
written in the book of life, are represented as being cast into 
the lake of fire, it is but a symbolical way of exhibiting the 
awful truth, that all the forces and abettors, the agents and 
the results of sin, shall be doomed to remediless destruction. 
The accursed thing with all belonging to it — the forms it has 
assumed, and the instruments it has wielded — shall go into the 
perdition which from the first it was destined to inherit. 

YI. The old framework of nature, with the noxious powers 
and elements which had so long held possession of it, being 
thus brought to an end, the closing scene of the book unfolds 
to us the new and better constitution which is to take its place. 
The description can only be regarded as presenting an imper- 
fect image, derived, like all the preceding delineations in the 
book, from such things in the past or present as seemed best 
fitted to shadow forth the coming reality. If we should seek 
to ascertain from it the precise form and lineaments of the 
Church's final condition and destiny, we shall turn it to a pur- 
pose it was palpably not intended to serve. It tells only (and 
relating as it does to things which immeasurably surpass all 
that eye has yet seen, or ear heard, it could tell only) of the 
relative nature and properties of what is to be hereafter. By 
a manifold variety of allusion and figure it exhibits this to our 
view as both negatively and positively perfect, alike freed from 
all evil and possessed of whatever is desirable, glorious, and 
good. The sea, which has so often served as an image of the 
world's restless turmoil and disorder, is no longer seen ; nor 
the temple, which by its own peculiar sanctity witnessed to the 
general pollution of the world around ; night also disappears, 
(emblem of the world's guilt and shame,) and with it every- 
thing that works abomination and causes defilement ; and, as 



4:80 PEOPHETICAL FUTURE OF THE CHURCH, ETC. 

the natural result of this stainless purity, there are found no 
tears, no sorrow, no pain, no death, for in such respects " the 
former things have passed away." Then, with this removal of 
all the forms and occasions of evil, there is not less prominently 
marked, under signs and emblems of an opposite description, 
the appearance of whatever might be needed to constitute a 
state of consummate happiness and glory. There is the radi- 
ance of a perennial luster, the very light and glory of God, 
investing the whole region of the Church's existence. Then 
the Church herself, seen descending from heaven in loveliest 
form and most comely attire, as a bride prepared for her mar- 
riage-nnion with the Lamb ; or again, appearing as a city, per- 
fect in its proportions and structure, paved with gold, built and 
garnished with the most precious gems ; a city watered with 
the river of life, issuing clear as crystal from the throne of God, 
and bearing on its banks the tree of life, the blessed medicine 
of immortality ; and to crown all, the living God, as now thor- 
oughly reconciled to the work of his hands, and beholding in 
all around the reflection of his own perfect nature, having his 
tabernacle with men, and discovering everywhere the signs of 
his gracious presence and working. What more is needed to 
complete the picture, and heighten the ideal of the coming 
good ? It is still, indeed, but an ideal, framed out of such ma- 
terials in the past and present as imagination has here at its 
command. It necessarily leaves undefined the exact shape 
and features of the glorious future. In that respect we must 
still say, " We know not what we shall be ;" but we know at 
the same time, we cannot doubt, from what is here written, 
that all shall be very good, and that as God is the end as well 
as the beginning of all, so the end shall be not only, like the 
beginning, perfect in its kind, but in that kind unspeakably 
higher and better; not nature rectified merely, but nature 
refined and glorified. 



APPENDICES. 



APPENDIX A, Page 20. 

THE ORIGIJiTAL IMPOET OF THE WORD ^'-^'2'2 (pEOPHET) AND ITS 

LATER USAGE. 

In what has been advanced respecting the true idea of a 
prophet, and the essential nature of a prophecy, no stress has been 
laid upon the original meaning or derivation of nabi {a^"^^:) as 
nothing material depends upon the precise view that may be 
taken of it. The difference of opinion which prevails respecting 
its fundamental import turns on the point whether it is originally 
of active or of passive signification ; whether it designates the 
prophet as the recipient or as the conveyer of divine communica- 
tions. The former is the more common, and also, in our judg- 
ment, the more natural opinion, both because the form (b'^tsp) is 
one that, according to the rule, is derived only from intransitive 
verbs, and because, understood in that sense, the word points to 
what is certainly the more fundamental characteristic of the 
prophet's calling — ^his relation to a revealing God. Ewald, how- 
ever, still holds to the other view, and understands the word as 
strictly importing a speaker who announces the mind and utters 
tRe words of another, who does not himself speak, (" Die Prophe- 
ten des Alten Bundes," p. 6.) Practically, the two opinions 
coalesce, since the true prophet was always one who in the first 
instance received communications from above, but only that he 
might impart them to others, so that it was equally his obliga- 
tion to speak, and to speak simply according to the tenor of what 
he had received. He who might speak without hanng received 
a message to deliver, and he who might refrain from communi- 
cating the message with which he had been charged, would alike 
prove unfaithful to the calling of a prophet, although, when dis- 
tinguishing the true from the false in prophecy, it is naturally the 

former deviation from the proper line that is most prominently 

31 



482 APPENDIX. 

exhibited. (See Jer. xiv, 14, and Ezek. xiii, 2, with the remarks 
in my commentary on the latter passage.) 

Turning, however, from the etymology and original import of 
the word to its later and more general usage, there can he no 
doubt that the deliverance of the message entered as the prepon- 
derating element into the idea of a prophet. Hence the change 
of phraseology that took place in ancient Israel when prophetic 
agency began to assume a more regular and recognized place ; 
the term seei\ which had more immediate respect to the inward 
receiDtion of the divine communication, fell into general disuse, 
and that of prophet^ which had then at least acquired a more 
active meaning, came in its place. (1 Sam. ix, 9.) The language 
of the prophets themselves bears respect to this distinction. 
Thus Isaiah, when reproving the people of his day as to their 
obstinate resistance to the word of God, speaks .of them as those 
" who say to the seers. See not ; and to the prophets. Prophesy 
not unto us right things, speak unto us smooth things, prophesy 
deceits." (Chap, xxx, 10.) And Jeremiah, when describing his 
own prophetic calling, represents himself as one sent in the name 
of the Lord to speak, and even designates himself " the Lord's 
mouth." (Chap, i, 7; xv, 19.) On this account also the person 
who simply delivered a divine message, though he had that mes- 
sage at second-hand, not directly from the Lord, one, therefore, 
who could not be called properly a seer, still bore the name of a 
prophet. Of such we have examples in the person whom Elisha 
sent to anoint Jehu, (2 Kings ix, 1-4,) and we may say in the 
prophets generally, as regards that portion of their work which 
consisted in the exercises of devotion and the re-enforcement of 
the law of Moses. It may be added that the Greek term, from 
which our word prophet is derived, ngocprjTTjg^ while in its original 
import equally comprehensive ^vith the Hebrew, j^iSiD — having 
respect to any divine communication, not merely to the predic- 
tion of future events — gives distinct expression to this active side 
of the matter ; it denotes one who discloses the mind of another, 
who speaks for a divine person. Thus poets were called " the 
prophets of the Muses," and Apollo " the prophet of Jupiter," 
and the Pythoness was "the prophetess of Apollo," each being 
viewed as the oracle of the parties they severally represented. 
So long as fxavTig was used somewhat in the sense of the Hebrew 
see)\ for one who possessed the spirit of divination, the Trpo^^rT/^ 



APPENDIX. 483 

was the interpreter of the oracle pronounced. But in later times 
the term came to acquire the meaning of our word prophet, 
denoting one who had obtained a supernatural insight into the 
mind of Deity, and more especially one who came forth with a 
revelation, real or pretended, of things to come. 



APPENDIX B, Page 23. 

INTERPRETATION" OF NUMBERS XII, 6-8, AND THE PROPHET LIKE 

TO MOSES. 

In the text we have given the precise and literal rendering of 
Num. xii, 6-8. But as a different view has been presented of 
their import, and one on which some important conclusions are 
founded, particularly in a treatise entitled the " Harmony of the 
Mosaic and Geologic Records," a few explanatory remarks are 
necessary. That the words in verse 6, " If there be a prophet 
among you," answer with substantial correctness to the original, 
which more literally runs, " If there be your prophet," is so 
obvious that had another meaning not been suggested we should 
scarcely have imagined any other could have been thought of. 
The Chaldee paraphrases, " If there should be prophets to you," 
and all commentators of any note give a similar sense. The (con- 
nection also seems conclusive in its favor, for Aaron and JMiriam 
were here ranging themselves against Moses, and on the side of 
the people ; they were endeavoring to raise a popular tumult 
against their brother, so that the expression "your prophet," 
spoken generally, and in respect to the people, is manifestly 
equivalent to " a prophet from among you," one not like Moses in 
a sense apart from, but out of your own number. To render, as 
is done in the treatise referred to, "If hfi [namely, Moses] were 
your prophet," that is, the prophet of Aaron -and Miriam, is 
against the preceding context, where the question is respecting a 
prophet from God, not to them^ but to the peojile^ and in respect 
to what follows, it involves a kind of incongruity. For it would 
represent God as intimating that he would have given visions 
and dreams to Moses had he been the prophet of Aaron and 
Miriam. Did Aaron himself, in consequence of being a prophet 
under Moses, get revelations in such a way from God ? We 



484 APPENDIX. 

certainly read of none, and, looking at his conduct on the present 
occasion, we should judge it very unlikely that he had received 
any. 

The two clauses, "I will make myself known to him in a 
vision, in a dream will I speak to him," explain one another. 
The revelation was to be made in the imperfect form of a vision ; 
but as this term is of somewhat doubtful import, and does not of 
itself sufficiently indicate the imperfection in the mode, another 
clause is added to make it more explicit, "in a dream I will speak 
to him." All the Jewish commentators understood a certain 
degree of obscurity to be implied in communications so made. 
And, as Baumgarten has justly remarked on the passage, "a 
divine revelation by dreams forms a complete contrast to revelar 
tion as made in paradise, where Jehovah walked, and where, 
therefore, his appearance was made in a quiet manner in connec- 
tion with the things of the external world, and presented itself to 
man while in his quite natural state." Here, on the contrary, he 
was to be taken out of his natural state, isolated from surround- 
ing objects, and raised merely for the moment, in his spiritual 
part, into communion with heaven. Such was God's ordinary 
mode of communicating with the prophets, usually so called, but 
not his mode of communicating with Moses, otherwise Moses had 
in this respect enjoyed no peculiar distinction. 

The distinction he actually possessed is stated in the second 
part of the declaration. In this part the word rendered vision in 
the first part again occurs, nsit'i^p, and is often translated adverbially, 
as in the authorized version " apparently." " I will show him 
the thing as it is," is Abenezra's explanation. RosenmuUer has 
" adspectu," and others render in a similar manner. There is no 
material difference in most of the explanations, nor will there be 
found any ambiguity in the double use of the same word, if only 
it is noted that in the case of the ordinary prophet, mentioned in 
the first part, the word was plainly intended to denote the form 
and method of the divine revelation made to him, while here it 
has respect rather to the personal manifestation of the revealing 
God, " Mouth to mouth I speak to him, and appearance." What 
can this mean in such a connection but visible, open manifesta- 
tion ? As indeed the last clause, which is evidently epexegetical 
of what precedes, renders manifest : " and the similitude or form 
of the Lord he beholds." Perspicuity and distinctness are the 



APPENDIX. 485 

characteristics here ; the employment of ordinary converse, and, as 
a natural consequence, the disuse of dark or enigmatical sen- 
tences. This is precisely such a distinction in behalf of Moses as 
the whole circumstances would lead us to expect. 

In regard to the purpose for which, in the treatise referred to at 
the beginning of this note, a different interpretation is sought to 
be established, namely, to represent Moses as having got the 
professionally historical account of creation in Gen. i by vision, 
it is open to other, and these also insuperable objections. On 
this point, however, we are not called to enter. We simply state 
that there is no instance of what is given to the Church as history 
having been communicated to the Church by way of vision, 
except in such cases as the visions recorded in Dan. ii and vii, or 
Rev. xii, where, in a dramatic representation of a connected series 
of events, the portion already past has also a certain place, an 
essentially different case, and very differently exhibited also from 
that of the Mosaic account of the creation. To regard this as 
given by vision is to confound the real and the ideal, history and 
prophecy. Nor can we bring at least the substance of the his- 
torical narrative contained in the three first chapters of Genesis 
so far down as the time of Moses. The great facts there related 
formed the very basis of the primeval religion, and either exactly 
the same history or another very much akin to it must have been 
communicated to the earliest worshipers of God. 

Not to dwell, however, upon such points, it is plain, from the 
right interpretation and clear import of this passage in Numbers, 
what was required to the full verification of the closely related 
passage in Deut. xviii, 18: "I will raise them up a prophet from 
among their brethren, like unto thee, and will put my words in 
his mouth, and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command 
him." From the connection in which the passage stands there 
can be little doubt that it had a certain respect to the prophetic 
testimony in general, which was to be continued among the cov- 
enant people. But the specific qualification included in the words 
like unto thee leaves as little room to doubt, on the other side, that 
nothing more than a partial and provisional fulfillment could be 
given to the prediction by prophets of an ordinary kind. There 
was a general resemblance between Moses and every prophet 
who received a divine communication to deliver to the people ; 
but along with that resemblance there was also an important 



486 APPENDIX. 

difference, a marked inferiority in the case of the ordinary 
prophet. His communications came only in vision and by dream, 
"while Moses received them by a waking, face to face intercom- 
munion, so that the people of our Lord's time justly expected the 
prophecy to receive a higher exemplification than it had yet 
found in the past, and the apostles had both the import of the 
original and the general feeling of their countrymen on their side 
when they applied it specifically to the Messiah. It was mani- 
festly the common understanding in their time, that the Messiah 
was to be emphatically the prophet spoken of; the only question 
was, whether Jesus of Nazareth was the person in whom the 
terms of the prediction had met with their fulfillment. That he 
was this, and as such not only like Moses in that wherein he dif- 
fered from the ordinary members of the prophetic order, but even 
rising far beyond him, must be the conviction of all who believe 
in his Messiahship. And though other points of resemblance 
between him and Moses should not be overlooked, yet when 
considered simply in respect to prophetic standing and gifts, it 
is in the particular point indicated in Num. xii, 6-8, that the 
likeness should be viewed as more peculiarly exemplified. The 
prophet like to Moses, in the full sense, could only be the one 
who received his revelations like Moses ; in the first instance 
Christ, and subordinately the apostles whom he sent forth to 
make known his mind and will to men. 



APPENDIX C, Page 27. 

PEOPHETIC AGENCY APAET FEOM PEKSONAL HOLINESS. 

The cases which most readily occur, of prophetic agency in a 
state of divorce from personal holiness, are those of Balaam in 
the Old Testament, and Caiaphas in the New. Both of them 
were manifestly of a quite exceptional nature, and stand entirely 
apart from the ordinary track of God's procedure in the bestowal 
of such gifts. It might, without impropriety, be said that there 
was a doubly miraculous element in the predictions they uttered ; 
they were miraculous as well on account of the personages who 
spoke as the divine foresight exhibited in what was spoken. 
Balaam was used by God, against his own inclination, to make 



APPENDIX. 487 

known the divine purposes at a peculiar crisis in the history of 
ancient Israel. It was a time when, with some apparent reason, 
their hearts were ready to faint at the prospect which was before 
them, and helps and encouragements of a somewhat extraordi- 
nary kind were needed to bear them through the trial. It 
seemed, therefore, an act worthy of the divine interposition, not 
only to provide the special support to faith that the emergency 
called for, but to do so in a way that should verify the proverb 
of even " making the eater bring forth meat." The more strik- 
ingly to manifest the power and faithfulness of God in behalf of 
his people, a blessing is extorted for them from a child of perdi- 
tion. On this account Balaam was used, though an unwillinf/ 
instrument ; and for a like reason, only in a more quiet and inci- 
dental manner, Caiaphas was used, even though an unconscious 
one. In a time altogether peculiar and extraordinary he was 
made to utter a sentiment in which thoughtful and reflective 
minds could not fail to perceive the overruling hand of God, since 
it declared a very great and important truth singularly applicable 
to the crisis, although not in the sense intended by the speaker. 
It was, we may say, the guiding of the last official representative 
of the priestly order enigmatically to disclose the event which 
was at once to antiquate its existence and to fulfill the end of its 
appointment. And this might the more fitly be done by one 
who knew not what he said, as the priesthood generally, at the 
time, had ceased to know the mystery of its own vocation. 

But setting aside such cases as altogether peculiar and excep- 
tional, the connection between the personal sanctity of the 
prophets and their divine communications will be found to hold 
as a general rule. It was not so stringent indeed in its applica- 
tion as not to admit of occasional defections in the history of 
particular persons, and considerable diversity in difierent indi- 
viduals of the prophetical order. When Jonah attempted to 
evade the work committed to him respecting Nineveh, by taking 
ship to go to Tarshish, there was undoubtedly a temporary failing 
in regard to the spiritual frame of mind proper to the true 
prophet. And to recover this, which could not be wanted in 
such a case, for that end primarily at least, he is subjected to a 
treatment alike severe and unprecedented. He is made to go 
down to the lowest depths, that he might there acquire the living 
faith and intense earnestness of soul which would fit him for 



488 APPENDIX. 

being the bearer of a divine message to Nineveh. In like manner 
the case of the old prophet at Bethel, mentioned in 1 Kings xiii, 
must be regarded in its more general aspect as that of a prophet 
imperfectly sanctified. Indeed the very fact of his residing at 
Bethel and remaining silent, as he appears to have done while 
Jeroboam was proceeding with his idolatrous innovations, was a 
clear sign of his having previously fallen into a state of spiritual 
slumber, and having become well nigh deserted by the Spirit of 
God. He seems to have been at length roused out of this 
slumber by the report of the circumstances connected with the 
mission of the prophet who came from Judah to denounce the 
divine judgment against the abominations of Jeroboam, and who 
received in the execution of his commission such manifest tokens 
of the divine approval. The old prophet was bent on making 
the acquaintance of this servant of God, and claiming as it were 
kindred with him, although no mode of accomplishing what he 
sought presented itself but that of decoying the other back by a 
falsehood. In this he too plainly showed how far he still was 
from having attained to the proper spiritual elevation. But as 
the other prophet also had erred in acceding to his proposal, and 
thereby deviating from the prescribed path of duty, a word for 
the occasion was given to the old prophet to intimate the dis- 
pleasure of God on the defection, and the judgment that was 
ready to chastise it. With the sin that mingled on both sides in 
the transactions it was impossible almost for the blindest not to 
see that the unbending truthfulness of God's word, and the neces- 
sity of holiness in those whom he called to his more immediate 
fellowship and service, received but a more impressive and awful 
testimony. To the idolatrous Bethelites it gave forth a peculiarly 
solemn warning, since if God so severely requited a compara- 
tively slight deviation from the path of rectitude in one of his 
chosen servants, how much more might he be expected to chas- 
tise their flagrant corruptions ! And to the members of the 
prophetical order themselves it furnished the salutary lesson, that 
if they would be honored by God with his more special com- 
munications, and be fitted for the higher kinds of service in his 
kingdom, they must be found in heart and conduct " holiness to 
the Lord." 



APPENDIX. 489 

APPENDIX D, Page 92. 

VIEWS OP EAELIEK REFORMED THEOLOGIANS ON THE CONDITIONAL 

ELEMENT IN PROPHECY, 

The discussion respecting the conditional element in prophecy- 
has been purposely conducted without any distinct reference t<) 
the views advanced by the more orthodox and systematic divines 
of former times ; chiefly because such a reference must either have 
rendered the discussion unduly protracted and polemical, or must 
have been so brief as to admit of being readily perverted or mis- 
understood, a fate that befell the very brief allusion which was 
made to them in the first edition. The theological writers more 
particularly referred to were the Calvinists of the seventeenth 
century, the great defenders and expounders of the faith, who 
looked only incidentally at the points here more immediately in 
question, and looked at them in a doctrinal rather than an exe- 
getical respect. Their more special object in referring to them 
was to vindicate the divine authority of revelation, and the 
orthodoxy of its higher truths, against conclusions apt to be 
drawn from apparent failures in prophetical announcements ; 
not to find their way to correct principles of prophetical inter- 
pretation, or to determine the proper place and bearing of proph- 
ecy in the history of God's dipensations. Hence they too often 
appear in such parts of their writings to be standing merely on 
the defensive, and not unfrequently drawing distinctions which 
seem invented for the occasion, and are more fitted to embarrass 
than to promote the intelligent study of prophecy. 

Stillingfleet's " Origines Sacrae " may be taken as a fair speci- 
men of this mode of treating prophecy by the writers now under 
consideration. Viewing prophecy with respect merely to the 
supernatural insight and veracity of the persons inditing it, the 
author had to account for the fact that prophetic announcements 
were not always strictly fulfilled, and it hence became necessary 
to distinguish between prophecies " revealing the internal counsels 
and decrees of God's will," and prophecies merely indicating " the 
method and series of his providence in the administration of things 
in the world." For determining those of the former class — those, 
namely, of an absolute character — four specific marks of distinction 
are assigned. (1.) The first is the accompanying of the prediction 



490 APPENDIX. 

with a present miracle, "by which, as by a visible seal from heaven, 
it was authenticated as a revelation of God's fixed purpose, or se- 
cret will ; a mark, however, which was of a merely circumstantial 
kind, and a mark besides which was so rarely given, (one exam- 
ple only being noticed, 1 Kings xiii, 3,) that it contributes noth- 
ing worth naming to the general result. (2.) Again, predictions 
are to be understood absolutely " when the things foretold exceed 
all probabilities of second causes," such as the. predicted deliver- 
ance first from Egypt, and afterward from Babylon, the only in- 
stances referred to by Stillingfleet in proof of the distinction. 
But we may surely ask, Did the promised deliverance from Egypt 
lie more beyond the probability of second causes than the prom- 
ised introduction of the persons delivered into the land of Canaan ? 
Or, was the threatened overthrow of Babylon, for the subsequent 
release and return of the Jewish captives, less probable when 
viewed with resj^ect to the operation of second causes than the 
earlier prediction, announced by Jonah, of the destruction of Nin- 
eveh in forty days ? No one could venture to assert the affirma- 
tive of these questions ; and yet, of the two pairs of predictions 
now mentioned, much apparently on a level as regards natural 
probability, one in each proved to be not a revelation of God's 
absolute will in the sense of Dr. Stilhngfleet, while the other did. 
His second mark of distinction, therefore, is destitute of any solid 
foundation, and does not touch the real grounds of difierence. 
Who, indeed, can tell, amid the hidden, intricate, curiously inter- 
connected movements of Providence, what events of the remote 
future lie within or beyond the probabilities of second causes ? 
In such matters human sagacity is an insufficient guide, and can 
ftirnish no proper criterion. (3.) A third distinction given is, 
that " predictions which are confirmed by an oath from God him- 
self, express the immutable determination of his will." True, cer- 
tainly, as to the fact ; for the two or three predictions which 
were so confirmed were literally fulfilled. (Num. xiv, 28 ; Psa. 
Ixxxix, 31-36 ; Heb. vi, 17.) Yet, as in the case of the first class, 
this is a merely circumstantial distinction ; a difierence only in 
the mode of announcement, and one adopted in accommodation to 
human infirmity, not of itself indicative of any inherent peculiarity 
in the matter of the predictions. Their actual verification must 
have resulted rather from their essential character than from that 
incidental accompaniment. (4.) Lastly, " predictions concerning 



APPENDIX. 491 

blessings merely spiritual (it is affirmed) do express God's eternal 
purpose ;" and for this reason, " because the bestowing of such 
blessings doth immediately flow from the grace and favor of God, 
and depend not upon conditions on our part." In one sense this 
is true, but in another not ; not as it requires to be understood in 
its present application. The most approved defenders of the doc- 
trines of grace have readily owned that many promises, or predic- 
tions of spiritual good, are conditional, (for ex. Turretine Inst. 
Loo. iii, Q. 16, § 14, 19 ;) and consequently depend for their fulfill- 
ment on the existence of the condition. The Bible abounds with 
such conditional announcements. The Sermon on the Mount 
opens with a whole series of them. And, to go further back, was 
there nothing spiritual in the promised settlement of the ransomed 
Israelites in Canaan, (Exod. xxxii, 34,) a word with which inspired 
writers identified the very sum of all spiritual blessings, " enter- 
ing into God's rest," (Psa. xcv, 2; Heb. iii, 11-19,) though it 
proved in such a sense conditional as to fail in the case of those to 
whonoL it was immediately given through their unbelief? Or, was 
there nothing spiritual in the covenant of promise made with Da- 
vid's house and seed ? In truth, the prophetic word itself knows 
of no such distinction as between spiritual and temporal in the 
promise and bestowal of blessing ; for, in Old Testament times, 
the two constantly went more or less together ; and it may justly 
be affirmed, that a simply temporal or a simply spiritual good 
never constituted the exclusive theme of any prophetic announce- 
ment made to the covenant people. 

It thus appears that the distinctive marks given by Stillingfleet 
of the higher or absolute species of predictions (and we know no 
writer of his age that gives them better) are of no real value. 
They bear unmistakable evidence of having been fallen upon pri- 
marily as weapons of defense, and were but casually intended to 
bear upon the subject of prophetic interpretation. Their inade- 
quacy in the one respect, however, necessarily renders them of 
little avail in the other ; and a skillful adversary might readily 
have served himself of them in impugning the authority of 
Scripture. 

It could scarcely be expected, that when the author failed so 
palpably in the one branch of his subject, he should have been 
successful when turning to the other. Accordingly, the directions 
he gives for ascertaining what predictions are not expressive of 



492 APPENDIX. 

the final determinations or secret will of God, discover their insuf- 
ficiency on a moment's consideration. He has here just two lead- 
ing positions, one of them ha^dng respect to predictions of tem- 
poral blessing ; these, he considers, always involve the condition 
of obedience, so that the event " could not be fulfilled when the 
people did not perform their condition ;" which is true, no doubt, 
as regards the class of predictions in question, but assuredly not 
on account of the simply temporal nature of the blessings indi- 
<5ated in the prophetic word ; for, as already stated, there were no 
such prophecies, and, in the nature of things, the temporal could 
never in this way be distinguished from the spiritual gifts of 
God's goodness. Stillingfleet's other rule is, that threatenings, or 
" comminations of judgments to come, do not of themselves 
speak the absolute futurity of the event;" and for this reason, 
" because comminations confer no right to any, which absolute 
promises do ; and therefore God is not bound to necessary per- 
formance of what he threatens." This is a favorite distinction of 
the period, (though some reject it, as Rivet in Genes. Exerc. 51, 
and Chamock on God's Immutability, III, prop. 4 ;) and we find 
it particularly pressed by another writer, (Gale,) who says, " Prom- 
ises give a right to the persons to whom they are made, which 
cannot be taken from them without injury; for albeit it be free 
to any to make a promise, yet having made it, his fidelity is 
obliged to see it performed. So that in promises there is no room 
for relaxation or dispensation. . . . But as to comminations or 
threats, no right or debt accrues to the persons to whom they are 
made, save only a debt or merit of punishment. Yet in many 
cases, especially as to circumstances, the superior, who made the 
law, and afiixed a threat thereto, has a liberty of relaxing, or dis- 
pensing with the penalty of his law," etc. (" Court of the Gen- 
tiles," P. lY, B. n, c. 6, § 2. See also Owen on Heb., vol. iv, 
p. 268.) As if the right of a creature were more binding on God 
than a regard to the verity of his own word ! Or, as if his threat- 
enings of judgment were not, equally with his promises of bless- 
ing, the expression of his character toward persons standing in 
specific relations to him ! As if, indeed, they were no more than 
arbitrary announcements, which he could send forth or recall at 
pleasure! This, surely, is a strange mode of vindicating the 
divine honor and faithfulness ; especially strange in those whose 
Calvinism bound them to seek the ultimate ground of all God's 



APPENDIX. 493 

dealings in the eternal principles of his own nature, or the counsel 
of his will ! It would never have been thought of, had it not pre- 
sented itself as a convenient method of escape from a polemical 
difficulty. There is more, however, than this against it ; for (as 
already stated in the section to which this note is appended) the 
greater part of God's comminations of judgment in the prophetic 
Scriptures are really indirect promises of good to the true children 
of the covenant. The first promise itself, on which all hope for 
fallen man was built, took the form of a threatening against the 
adversary ; and generally, the denunciations of coming judgment 
on ungodly nations and individuals are but the reverse aspect of 
God's covenant-love and faithfulness to his people. So that to 
distinguish in the way now under consideration between threaten- 
ings and promises^ as if the one were in their own nature less 
closely connected with the secret will of God than the other, is to 
take but a superficial view of the matter ; it betokens a defective 
insight into the structure of prophecy. The fundamental element 
for such distinctions is wanting, so long as due account fails to be 
made of the relation of prophecy to God's moral nature on the one 
hand, and men's responsibilities on the other. 

Yet with so many crude, superficial, arbitrary positions on the 
subject, there are not wanting some who can point to Stillingfleet, 
and writers of his stamp and age, as authorities regarding it, safe 
and skillful guides in distinguishing between the absolute and the 
conditional in its predictions. Such appeals may serve a purpose ; 
but it can never be the purpose of promoting the unbiased study 
and sound interpretation of prophetical scripture. 



APPENDIX E, Page 107. 

SYMBOLICAL DESIGNATION OF KINGDOMS AS MOUNTAINS. 

The first passage, probably, in which a kingdom is presented 
under the symbol of a physical elevation, or a mountain, is the 
historical notice in 2 Sam. v, 12, where it is said of David's inter- 
est as king, "And David perceived that the Lord had established 
him king over Israel, and that He had exalted his kingdom ;" it 
had now sensibly become a conspicuous thing, a height in the 
earth. Writing in Psa. xxx, and at a later period, of the vicissi- 



494: APPEKDIX. 

tudes wMcli lie experienced on the throne, he says, " Lord, by thy 
favor thou didst make my mountain to stand strong ; thou didst 
hide thy face and I was troubled." In Psa. Ixviii, 16, the hill of 
Zion, which had already been chosen as the seat of the kingdom, 
is taken for an emblem of it ; and the other and loftier, but more 
remote, hills stand for images of the rival kingdoms of the heathen : 
" Why leap ye, ye high hills ? This is the hill God desu-eth to 
dwell in ; yea, the Lord will dwell in it for ever." In Psa. xlvi, 2, 
the mountains are spoken of as " shaking in the midst of the sea," 
and the figure is explained by the introduction of the reality at 
verse 6, where it is said the heathen raged, the kingdoms were 
moved," or rather shook. The hill of Zion with its fortress is 
identified with the kingdom of God, and addressed as symbolic- 
ally one with it in Micah iv, 8 : "And thou, O tower of the flock, 
the stronghold [hill] of the daughter of Zion, unto thee shall it come, 
even the first dominion ; the kingdom Jerusalem shall come to the 
daughter of Zion ;" as it is also in Isa. xi, 9, where the temple- 
mount, the ideal dwelling-place of God with his people, is viewed 
as comprehensive of the whole divine kingdom, and this again as 
coextensive with the entire habitable globe. Compare also Dan. 
ix, 16, 20 ; also chap, ii, 35, where the stone which represents the 
Lord's kingdom appears growing into a huge mountain, and filling 
the whole earth. In Psa. Ixxvi the greater heathen kingdoms are 
denoted, not only mountains, but " prey-mountains," as being ap- 
parently raised to the gigantic height they attained for the pur- 
pose only of laying waste and destroying others. Babylon in par- 
ticular is called by Jeremiah, chap, li, 25, "a destroying mountain 
that destroyed all the earth ;" not as Bishop N^ewton interprets, 
(vol. i, chap. 10,) " on account of the great height of its walls and 
towers, its palaces and temples," but from its lofty and domineer- 
ing altitude among the political eminences of the world. And 
hence, quite naturally, in the Apocalypse, which gathers up and 
applies the symbolical imagery of the earlier prophets, moimtains 
are used in a whole series of passages as the familiar designation 
of kingdoms. Rev. vi, 14; viii, 8; xvi, 20, etc. 



APPENDIX. 495 

APPENDIX F, Page 109. 

PEOPHETICAL LITERALISM ESSENTIALLY JEWISH. 

The essential coincidence between the Jewish mode of inter- 
preting prophecy and that of the extreme literalists among Chris- 
tians, will force itself on any one who compares for a moment 
what has been written by the respective parties on the prophetical 
future. For the most part he will find the same passages quoted 
by both, and the same principle of the historical sense applied to 
them ; only with this difference, that while both apply it to estab- 
lish the necessity of a future restoration of the Jews to Palestine, 
and the reinstitution of the Mosaic polity and worship, the Jew 
also applies it, and with perfect consistence, to the rejection of 
Jesus Christ as the Messiah. We say with perfect consistence, 
for the principle is as fairly applicable to the one point as to the 
other, and by that principle the evidence of prophecy in favor of 
the Messiahship of Jesus is not impaired merely, but annihilated. 
The argument from prophecy as between Christians and Jews is 
gone ; that only remains which may serve the Jew against infidels 
and heathens. If, for example, the literalist school of interpreters 
among Christians are right in maintaining, as they do, that Christ 
has not yet appeared as King of Zion, or as the possessor of Da- 
vid's throne and kingdom, why should not Rabbi Crool (in his 
" Restoration of Israel," a work replied to by Thomas Scott) and 
other Jewish writers be equally right in contending that Jesus of 
Nazareth cannot be the Messiah ? The passages which both par- 
ties appealed to, such as Zech. ix, 9 ; Isa. ix, 6, 7 ; Micah v, 2, though 
they are expressly declared by the evangelists to have been ful- 
filled in Christ, yet speak of the Messiah under the very character 
and relations which, it is alleged, have not yet been assumed by 
him ; they represent him as going to appear among men, to be 
born at Bethlehem, to ride on an ass into Jerusalem, etc., in the 
character of the king of the Jews, and to the great joy of his sub- 
jects. Therefore, says Crool, and with manifest right on this 
principle, your Jesus cannot be the 3Icssiah, for he did not sit 
upon David's throne, he set up no Jewish kingdom ; and instead of 
finding joy, and peace, and union from his presence, the Jewish 
people only then began to experience their greatest troubles and 



496 APPENDIX. 

their widest dispersions. So of the greater proportion of pro- 
phetical passages applied in Kew Testament Scripture to Christ ; 
and with equal justice on the principle of historical literalism, for 
they generally connect the appearance and work of Christ on 
earth with his destiny as the Son of David, or his relation to Zion 
and the covenant-people. And if certain characteristics are asso- 
ciated in prophecy with Messiah's birth and appearance ; if certain 
results are described as flowing simply from his coming^ not from 
his coming a second time, to Zion or Jerusalem, and if these are 
not found in the person and history of Jesus of Xazareth, the 
plain and obvious inference is that the promised Messiah is yet to 
come. In a word, the apologetic value of prophecy as regards the 
truth of Christianity is gone, and instead of a means of defense 
we find a weapon of assault. So much is this felt to be the natu- 
ural tendency of the line of interpretation referred to, that those 
who adopt it have of late years been withdrawing prophecy after 
prophecy from the number of those which the inspired penmen 
and all truly Christian writers hitherto have understood of Christ. 
As in regard to the first great promise to fallen man, so also here, 
the principle of a prophetical literalism has led to the same result 
as its apparent opposite, a subtilizing rationalism : the one needs 
as much the doctrine of accommodatlo7i as the other in explaining 
the iSTew Testament applications of prophecy to Jesus. See this 
proved in " Typology of Scripture," Book I, chap, i, against an 
American Literalist ; see also Dr. Brown's " Second Advent," 
chap, vii, for proof of the successive abandonment of prophecies in 
reference to Christ, and for some able and acute remarks respect- 
ing the essentially Jewish position of the interpreters in question. 
Indeed, the list there given might be greatly increased. In chap- 
ter i, sec. 3 of our Second Part, when treating of the apologetic 
value of prophecy, the subject necessarily recurs again, and it is 
there shown that the literalism sought for in respect to Christ's 
throne and kingdom was in the nature of things impossible, and 
that if he be really the Son of God, the differences between the 
new and old form of things could not be otherwise than they are. 
It is therefore justly said by Hengstenberg, (" Christology," sec- 
ond Edition, App. vi,) that the strictly literal style of prophetical 
interpretation is essentially the very same as that which the Jew- 
ish commentators adopt ; that its value may also be understood 
from the countenance given to it by many Rationalists on the Con- 



APPENDIX. 497 

tinent ; hut that its strongest condemnation consists in its being 
the very method of interpretation which led to the crucifixion of 
Christ. 



APPENDIX G, Page 124. 

INTEEPEETATION OF 2 PETER I, 21. 

The rendering given in the text of 2 Peter i, 21, is the strictly 
literal one ; and as so rendered the passage exhibits more dis- 
tinctly the contrast between the human and the divine in proph- 
ecy, denying it to be of the one, and affirming it to be of the 
other ; at the same time representing the mental state of those to 
whom and through whom it came, to have been of a quite super- 
natural description. The statement contained in the passage ia 
given as a reason for the more general declaration which immedi- 
ately precedes, that " Scripture prophecy is not of private inter- 
pretation," or, as it should rather be, " no Scripture prophecy 
comes of one's own solution ;" literally, loosing out, eniAVGeojg. 
The word is peculiar, but its use here is to be accounted for by 
prophecy being contemplated according to its fundamental char- 
acter, as an unraveling or opening out of the secret counsels of 
heaven. As such it comes, the apostle tells us, from no private 
solving of the hidden mystery on the part of those who uttered 
it ; it was not of one's own (namely, the prophet's) unfolding. 
This seems to us by far the most natural sense of the passage ; as 
it is also the one which fits most suitably in to what follows. It 
is only thus, too, that we preserve the force of the verb yiverai, 
which is comparatively lost in our common version ; for the real 
import of the apostle's statement is, not that no Scripture proph- 
ecy is, but that none comes in the manner specified ; it does not 
so take its being and form. The question is not, as it is put by 
Bishop Horsley and many others, how the 7neaning of prophecy 
is to be made out or interpreted, but how prophecy itself came 
into existence, whence it drew its origin. And besides, to say of 
all prophecy alike, as such persons understand the declaration, 
that it is not of self-interpretation, but can only be understood as 
to its proper bearing when the events it contemplates have act- 
ually occurred, is not true as regards some prophecies, (for exam- 
ple, 1 Tim. iv, 1, "The Spirit speaketh expressly,") and would 

32 



4:98 APPEKDIX. 

virtually contradict wliat the apostle liad said of prophecy imme- 
diately before, when he represented it as " a light shining in a dark 
place." With what propriety could it be designated a shining 
light, if itself necessarily remained without any sure interpretation 
till outwardly shone upon by the events of Providence ! 



APPENDIX H, Page 132. 

THE SYMBOLIC ACTIO^^'S OF THE PROPHETS. 

The rule laid down in the text, founded on the distinction be- 
tween the record of God's communications to the prophet, and 
that of the prophet's communications to the people, we have said, 
will generally be found sufficient to guide us in determining 
whether the actions described belong to the ideal region, or to the 
territory of actual life. It will be so at least if it is coupled with 
the considerations previously advanced respecting the essential 
nature of the actions themselves. This may, perhaps, be rendered 
more palpable by a brief examination of the view that is presented 
of some of the prophetical actions noticed or referred to in the text 
by writers who understand them in a realistic manner. We shall 
take it on the showing of one of the most sensible and judicious 
of the class, the Rev. Dr, Turner, of America. In a little work, 
published in 1852, " Thoughts on the Origin, Character, and Inter- 
pretation of Scriptural Prophecy," after mentioning some instances 
of revelation by symbolic vision, he says: "But the symbolic 
method was often employed by means of real actions openly per- 
formed. That ideas may be conveyed in this way distinctly and 
with perfect clearness, we know with cei-tainty. Observation and 
experience have proved this beyond all doubt. In adopting this 
method, therefore, divine wisdom did but choose one from among 
various means, any of which is sufficiently well adapted to assure 
men of the meaning of his will. And the method chosen is some- 
times the most impressive and startling that can possibly be imag- 
ined. When it is said of the prophet Isaiah, that, in obedience to 
the divine command to ' loose the sackcloth from his loins,' and 
to ' put off the shoe from his foot,' ' he did so, walking naked [that 
is, stripped of a part of his clothing] and barefoot three years, a 
sign and a wonder ' — ^in other words a remarkable indication of 



APPENDIX. 490 

God's judgment ^upon Egypt and upon Ethiopia' — it is hardly- 
possible to conceive of a more direct prediction of overthrow and 
captivity, and of the contumely and shame to which Egypt, the 
world-ren owned, the world- scorning, and in its own estimation all 
but celestial, Egypt should be exposed. And when Ezekiel is 
* set for a sign unto the house of Israel,' and at the command of 
God ' removes his furniture in the sight ' of the people, ' bearing 
it upon his shoulders and covering his face ; ' it would seem that 
the act itself spoke out its own meaning, and certified the miser- 
able inhabitants that they ' should remove and go into captivity ;' 
that the prince should be degraded to a servile condition, carrying 
the most necessary articles, and hiding his face through shame for 
the ignominy to which he should be subjected. Let us look at the 
symbolical actions of Jeremiah. On one occasion God orders him 
to get a potter's earthern bottle, and after a public proclamation, 
addressed to king and people, of terrible judgments impending, 
and of their iniquities which occasioned them, to break the bottle 
in pieces in their presence, as a symbol of their utter destruction. 
Such preaching, one might think, could hardly need the oral com- 
ment accompanying it, which begins in these words ; ' Thus saith 
the Lord of hosts, even so will I break this people and this city, 
as one breaketh a potter's vessel that it cannot be made whole 
again.' At another time he is directed to send yokes to certain 
kings in the neighborhood of Judea, indicating that the Creator 
and owner of all had resolved to subjugate them to the Babylo- 
nian power, announcing at the same time that Zedekiah, the reign- 
ing king of Judah, should also be compelled to submit to the same 
degradation. To select another illustration from the same prophet ; 
While the armies of Nebuchadnezzar are besieging Jerusalem, 
and its conquest by the Chaldeans is generally expected ; when 
the death, destruction, or captivity of the inhabitants is almost 
morally certain, and consequently no value can be attached to 
property, the enjoyment or possession of which had become wholly 
precarious ; Jeremiah, at the divine direction, buys a field within 
the city, pays down the purchase-money, requires a deed properly 
attested, has the transaction witnessed according to law and with 
remarkable circumstantiality, and adopts measures to secure the 
legal documents, that they may neither be lost nor injured. No 
doubt the ungodly portion of the inhabitants, who had abandoned 
themselves to the despair of infidelity, must have imagined that 



500 APPENDIX. 

the prophet had become insane. But all this was done to show 
his faith in the divine promise of a future restoration and resettle- 
ment of the people in their own land, which took place long after- 
ward under the decree of Cyrus. And to adduce one more in- 
stance : On occasion of the birth of a son, Isaiah is directed to 
give him a symbolical name, indicative of the fact that the Assyr- 
ians should plunder Israel and Syria, powers which were then in 
hostile combination against Judah. In order to give publicity to 
the prediction, he is required to write the name of the child on a 
broad roll or tablet. He does so, and has the whole matter 
attested by unimpeachable witnesses of high standing and char- 
acter. In due time the fact takes place, and the prophecy is 
verified."— Pp. '75-78. 

We have admitted that the action recorded in the nineteenth 
chapter of Jeremiah, in respect to his going to the potter, is so 
related as to leave us in some doubt whether it took place only in 
vision or on the territory of real life. We shall therefore allow 
it to pass without particular notice, but shall make a few com- 
ments on the rest. 

1. The first is the action of Isaiah, chap, xx, appointed to sym- 
bolize the coming disgrace and humiliation of Egypt and Ethiopia. 
What is the action according to the description of the prophet ? 
Not, as Dr. Turner and others make it, " stripping off a part of 
his clothing," but " loosing the sackcloth from off his loins, and 
putting off his shoe from his foot," and for three whole years 
" walking naked and barefoot ;" and this expressly as a sign of 
the people of Egypt' and Ethiopia being doomed ere long to 
become captives, rendered " naked and barefoot, even with their 
buttocks uncovered, to the shame of Egypt." The thing signi- 
fied was a shameful uncovering^ or a disgraceful humiliation of 
those proud worldly powers on whose support Israel was idola- 
trously inclined to lean, and the sign which was appointed to 
foreshadow it was a shameful uncovering of the prophet's person. 
This alone could be a proper sign, and to talk of his putting off 
only a part of his garments, as if the object had been merely to 
lessen the comfort or gracefulness of his attire, is quite beside the 
purpose. Nothing less than a shameful exposure of the person 
was required to satisfy the conditions of the prophecy. And if 
the affair was conducted amid the realities of daily life, the 
prophet must necessarily have made himself a spectacle of aver- 



APPENDIX. 501 

Bion to every right thinking person. In the very act of fulfilling 
his mission he must have given a shock to the interests of piety ; 
such, nay, greatly more than was done in our own land by the 
early Quakers, who were led by a mistaken view of this and 
similar passages in the prophetical writings, to exhibit in actual 
life what had been transacted by the prophets in vision. The 
universal disgust produced in Edinburgh by some of that sect 
running through the streets without clothing, and crying out 
that they were " the naked truth," or by one in Aberdeen 
(Andrew Jaffray) who, stripped to the middle, and with filth in 
his hand, walked about proclaiming himself to be " a spectacle 
and a sign among the people," on account of the ofifensiveness of 
their sins, may convince us how impossible it was for God to 
have commanded his servant Isaiah to present himself in such an 
attitude to the people even for a day, to say nothing of three 
whole years. Besides, if such painful results could anyhow have 
been averted, an action of the kind specified, when spread over so 
many years, and seen, if seen at all, only in fragmentary portions 
and by a few individuals, must have lost nearly all its effect in 
the performance. And then the action itself left its own bearing 
undefined. How should any one who might have seen the 
prophet walking in his shame have known to transfer the image 
to Egypt and Ethiopia ? It must have been from an accompany- 
ing word explaining the action that they were enabled to do so. 
So that it still was the prophetic word to which they were mainly 
to be indebted for the information of their minds ; and the re- 
hearsing of the action as done in the visions of God, done in the 
peculiar sphere of the prophet's spiritual agency, along with the 
explanation of it, was on every account the mode best fitted for 
reaching the end; the only mode, we may affirm, actually pos- 
sible. 

2. The other action of the prophet Isaiah referred to by Dr. 
Turner, the last of the cases specified by him, not less impera- 
tively demands the same interpretation. We have again to 
notice the slurring over the main features of the transaction as 
presented by Dr. Turner ; he speaks of it as simply consisting in 
the ceremony of giving a symbolical name to a child of the 
prophet. This, however, was the smallest part of the matter. 
The existence of the child, much more than his name, was what 
formed the embodied prophecy; the name merely served to 



502 APPENDIX. 

explain the symbolic meaning of the child himself. And how 
was this child to come into being ? Not properly as a member 
of the prophet's family, but the prophet was to " go to the proph- 
etess," who was thereafter to conceive and bring forth the son 
that was to bear the symbolic name, and not only to go, bnt to 
take with him witnesses of the whole transaction, that there 
might be no doubt respecting any part of it. (Chap, viii, 1-3.) 
Can anything be conceived more entirely at variance with the 
essential character of a true prophet, if understood of what was 
to be done in real life, or that would more palpably have indenti- 
fied his procedure with the worst practices of self-inflated vision- 
aries ? For the prophetess to whom Isaiah was to go, and with 
whom he was to have carnal intercourse, can with no propriety 
be understood to be his own wife ; she is represented as one 
standing apart from him, and with whom his connection was to 
be quite special, so as to require even a formal attestation. An 
ideal person, therefore, she must be considered, and the connec- 
tion one that existed only in the ideal sphere, if the prophet is to 
be vindicated from the charge of pollution in the very execution 
of his mission. Indeed the mode of designating her clearly indi- 
cates as much : the prophetess — what prophetess ? We have 
heard of none before, and we hear of none afterward in this 
connection. Such a designation can be understood only if 
viewed as the form into which God threw his communication to 
the prophet, and as such confined to the higher sphere of his 
immediate intercourse with heaven. An assurance was to be 
given to the people of the approaching certain overthrow of the 
enemies of God's covenant, the combined powers of Samaria and 
Damascus. And for that purpose there is given forth an account 
of an ideal transaction, through which the prophet is spiritually 
conducted by God, and in which he (the prophet) is described as 
going to the prophetess, that by the conjunction of a twofold 
prophetical character in the parentage there might be a birth in 
the fullest sense prophetical, a son so strikingly predictive of the 
coming overthrow that, before he should be able to cry, "My 
father," both Syria and Damascus should have fallen under the 
stroke of Assyria. Viewed thus merely as a sensible form, 
though confined to the ideal sphere under which God made 
known his fixed determination to the people, one can easily per- 
ceive the propriety of what is recorded ; but no otherwise can 



APPENDIX. 603 

the history it seems to delineate be vindicated from the gravest 
charges. It may be added, that in this case, too, as in the pre- 
ceding, it could not have been the outward reality (even if it had 
taken place, and had been liable to no moral imputation) on 
which must mainly have depended the assurance given of the 
intended result : the chief ground for faith to rest upon still was 
the word which accompanied and explained the transaction. 
And for this it was substantially one whether the word was con- 
nected with an action in vision or an action in ordinary life. 

3. The case of Ezekiel at the divine bidding removing his fur- 
niture in the sight of the people, and going forth with covered 
face and only an exile's implements, (chap, xii,) is particularly 
unhappy for the realistic interpretation. Dr. Turner seems to 
have regarded it as one of the most telling examples, as if the act 
itself spoke its own meaning. But he forgets where the prophet 
was when the supposed action was performed before his country- 
men. Both he and they were already in exile on the banks of 
the Chaboras, and the impression that would naturally have been 
produced upon their minds by the sight of such a symbolic action 
would have been not that the day of exile, but rather that the 
day of escape from exile, was at hand. The persons whose exile 
was foreshadowed in the prophecy were the king and people far 
off in Jerusalem, not those who should have witnessed the trans- 
action had it been outwardly performed. So that for those 
whom the prophetic action irntiiediately contemplated it must of 
necessity have been not the actual sight of what was done, but 
only the rehearsal of it that was to tell upon their minds. And 
surely in that case it mattered little whether the sphere of the 
transaction might be the ideal or the real world, while for those 
in the immediate neighborhood of the prophet it so far mattered, 
that if it had outwardly taken place before them it would have 
tended to convey a false information. 

4. It is needless to dwell upon the two instances (besides the 
one already considered) connected with the prophetical agency 
of Jeremiah. They are both of them confined to what respects 
God's communications to the prophet, and so belong to the 
higher sphere in which direct communication was held with 
heaven. One of them may be said to have been beset with im- 
possibilities if considered as an action in real life. We refer to 
the bonds and yokes which Jeremiah was commanded in chap. 



504: APPENDIX. 

xxvii to make, and not only put upon Ms own neck, "but also to 
send to the kings of Edom, of Moab, of the Ammonites, of Tyre, 
and of Sidon, and to do so by the hand of the messengers who 
were coming to Zedekiah, as a sign that all those countries were 
to be brought into subjection to the king of Babylon. Such 
persons we may be sure would neither carry such a symbol to 
the different kings mentioned, nor the message that was ap- 
pointed to accompany it. And the prophecy itself was for the 
people of Jerusalem rather than for those surrounding nations. 
It only took the form of a message to them, in order more dis- 
tinctly to show the fixedness of God's purpose regarding the 
issue of the struggle in which Zedekiah was engaged with the 
king of Babylon. The rehearsing by the prophet of the com- 
mand he had received, to make the yokes, and send them to the 
different parties, was what properly constituted the prophecy. 
And though Jeremiah appears, from what is related in chap, 
xxviii, to have had yokes actually on his neck, yet this seems 
rather to have been done for the purpose of calling attention to 
the prophecy than the necessary condition of its announcement. 
Nor is anything said in the historical part of the sending of 
yokes to the surrounding nations. In regard to the other 
instance, that recorded in chap, xxxii, the whole has the aspect 
of a continuous stream of communications between God and the 
prophet ; and the prophetical action about the buying of Hana- 
meel's field is most naturally regarded as of a piece with the rest, 
an action in vision. There are other reasons also against its 
being taken as an actual transaction, for, being a priest, Jeremiah 
could scarcely have entered into any such transaction for the 
purchase of land ; and if he could, yet, as he had predicted that a 
desolation was at hand which was to last for seventy years, the 
transaction would in his case have been a kind of extravagance, 
since long before the purchase could have been of any avail he 
must have been numbered with the dead, and all the old land- 
marks practically abolished. Only as an ideal action in the 
peculiar region of the prophet's spiritual activity does it admit of 
a natural and fitting interpretation. 

Thus, when more nearly considered, the instances appealed to in 
proof of the symbolic actions having taken place in real life are 
found to support the principle of interpretation we have sought 
to establish. The striving after outward reality in such things, 



APPENDIX. 605 

on the part of modem commentators, lias chiefly arisen from for- 
getfulness respecting the fundamental law of prophetic revelation, 
that it was to be by vision. Had this been sufficiently borne 
in mind it would have seemed quite natural (as no doubt it did 
to those by whom and to whom the word of prophecy came) that 
in accounts of divine communications things done in the sphere 
of the prophet's ecstatic elevation should have been described as 
real transactions ; for to the prophet's own consciousness, and as 
symbolic representations for the people of the mind and purposes 
of God, they had all the force and value of realities. 



APPENDIX I, Page 251. 

ST. PETEE'S DISCOUKSES IN ACTS II, IH. 

The view given in the text, of Peter's discourses in the Acts, 
puts no strain upon any of the expressions, but takes them all in 
their natural sense and connection. Strange liberties are resorted 
to by those who espouse the Jewish theory of the future, and in 
part also by some who adopt only the semi- Jewish. The ques- 
tion of the disciples to Jesus on the eve of his ascension, about 
restoring the kingdom to Israel, is usually made not only to com- 
mit Jesus to the fact of such a restoration, but also to rule by its 
carnal sense the whole of the subsequent expressions. It is 
assumed that Peter's views of the kingdom after the descent of 
the Spirit continued the same as they were before^ and that, how- 
ever it might be in other respects, on this subject he gained 
nothing in depth, spirituality, or clearness of discernment. It is 
usually further assumed, that in those invitations to press into 
the kingdom, addressed to men far and near, as many as the Lord 
might call, he never thought of any but Jews as having a right 
to the blessings of the kingdom, although the Lord had in the 
most explicit manner charged the apostles to include the whole 
world in their ministrations. They were, he said, to be "his 
witnesses both in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and in Samaria, 
and unto the uttermost part of the earth;" a regular gradation, 
but only in respect to order and time ; first Jerusalem, then the 
country around Judea ; next Samaria, the kind of intermediate 
region between Jew and Gentile ; and finally, the most remote 



506 APPENDIX. 

and distant territories. Nay, the original charge, as given in 
Mark xvi, 15, was that they were to "go into all the world, and 
preach the Gospel to every creature," precisely as in the first 
parable " the field is the world." So that if Peter and the apostles 
still thought only of Jews as entitled to a place in the kingdom, 
they must have been most strangely inattentive to their Lord's 
instructions. That they did not open the door at once to the 
Gentiles arose simply from their views respecting circumcision 
and the law ; they thought these were still to remain in force, 
and consequently that the Gentiles must enter the Messiah's 
kingdom by passing under the Jewish yoke. But this had respect 
merely to the mode of admission ; it did not touch the fact that 
the Gentiles had an equal right to enter, but simply that they 
had to enter as the Jews ; both alike must go in by the legal 
door. And in this very circumstance we have an answer to the 
statement made by many, among others by Baumgarten, respect- 
ing the sense attached by the apostles to the expression, " the 
restoration of the kingdom to Israel," as necessarily meaning, 
both with them and with Christ, the revival of Israel's external 
power and splendor as a nation, because " their honest and child- 
like minds clung to the what and the how that the prophets had 
written of." The apostles no doubt did this, they did so in this 
matter only too long, and in respect to circumcision as well as 
the kingdom ; but the issue proved in the latter case that their 
spirit, however honest and childlike, needed enlightenment, as the 
style of Peter's future discourses showed that it had also done in 
respect to the other. 

The passage in chap, ii, 30-36 seems alone quite conclusive of a 
change of view respecting the kingdom. In one part there is a 
diversity as to the proper reading, and the two best MSS. A, B, 
omit the words in verse 30, rendered in the common version, 
" According to the flesh, he would raise up Christ." There are 
good reasons for supposing that these words were not in the 
original, so that the passage should stand thus : " Therefore 
[David] being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with 
an oath to him, of the fruit of his loins to make to sit upon his 
throne, foreseeing this, he spake concerning the resurrection of 
Christ, that his soul was not left in hell, neither did his flesh see 
corruption. This Jesus God has raised up, whereof we all are 
witnesses," etc., and after quoting Psa. ex, 1, 2, he concludes : 



APPENDIX. SOT 

*' Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God 
had made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord 
and Christ." The passage is plain enough without the omitted 
words, and unless it is a piece of false logic, and the conclusion 
does not cohere with the premise, it explicitly affirms Christ's 
present possession of the throne of David. The position from 
which Peter sets out is, that " God had sworn with an oath to 
David, of the fruit of his loins to make to sit upon his throne ;" 
and the conclusion at which he arrives is, that that same Jesus 
who had been crucified and had ascended to the right hand of 
God " has been made both Lord and Christ." In such a connec- 
tion what can being made Lord and Christ mean but sitting 
upon David's throne ? What other inference could the public 
audience Peter addressed (who had neither time nor taste for 
subtle ingenuities, but naturally took the words in their plain 
and obvious meaning) draw from the statement ? They must 
have felt that, according to the apostle, the word to David 
respecting the possession of his throne by a son had now 
reached its fulfillment. As contemplated by them, the being 
made Lord and Christ in any other sense would not have been 
to the point. 

The words uttered in common by the apostles in an address to 
God, as recorded in chap, iv, 25-2 Y, clearly express the same 
view. They quote the first verses of the second psalm, which 
speak of the rulers combining and standing up " against the Lord 
and his Christ," (anointed,) and then, applying the testimony to 
present times, they add, " For of a truth, against thy holy child 
Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, 
with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, were gathered to- 
gether." In such a connection, to call Jesus the person whom 
God had anointed, could only mean what is more fully expressed 
in the second psalm by being anointed as king and set on his 
holy hill of Zion. In any other sense the application of the terms 
must have been irrelevant, and fitted to mislead, unless indeed 
(for that is the only means of escape from the conclusion) the 
apostles acted on the rationalistic principle, and merely accom- 
modated the words of David to Jesus on account of certain 
resemblances between the two cases. 

The other passage referred to in the text, chap, iii, 19-21, is 
the only one in those addresses of Peter which distinctly points 



508 APPENDIX. 

to the future. Here the correct rendering undoubtedly is : 
" Repent ye, therefore, and be converted, for the blolting out of 
your sins ; in order that seasons of refreshing may come from the 
presence of the Lord, and that he may send Christ Jesus, who 
was before appointed to you [or the Christ before appointed to 
you — Jesus,] whom the heavens, indeed, must receive, till the 
times of the restitution (dnoKaraordaeGyg) of all things, of which 
God hath spoken by the mouth of his holy prophets from the 
beginning of his world." Such persons as can see nothing here 
but Israelitish prospects, and nothing more in the restitution of 
all things than what was meant to be expressed at chap, i, 6, by 
the restoration of the kingdom to Israel, must be swayed by 
other reasons than are furnished by a natural exposition of the 
apostle's words ; and they do him besides the manifest injustice 
of making his views, before the descent of the Spirit, rule and 
determine those which he entertained afterward. Discharging 
all preconceived notions, and taking the passage in its most 
obvious meaning, it seems plamly to indicate a series of progress- 
ive stages : first, a present duty in order to a present blessing, 
(repenting and being converted for the sake of obtaining forgive- 
ness of sin ;) then, on the ground of this repentance and forgive- 
ness, the just expectation of seasons of refreshing, seasons like 
that of Pentecost, which those only who have become forgiven 
and accepted in the Beloved can rightfully expect, but which 
they may confidently look for. These, however, are not the 
ultimate things of redemption ; there is a stage higher and better 
still, for which they but tend to prepare the way and hasten 
forward the consummation. This is denoted by the sending of 
Christ Jesus from heaven, and the times of the restitution of all 
things, for though, did the sense absolutely require it, the 
seasons of refreshing (Kaipol dvaipv^ecjg) in verse 20 might be 
identified with the times of the restitution of all things [x9^'^^ 
dnofcaraardaeoog ndvrcjv) in verse 21, yet the natural supposition 
is that they point to different epochs, as they also seem to indi- 
cate different results. Times of refreshing may come from the 
Lord's presence while the Lord himself is not visibly manifest, 
and in no proper sense can they be called, when they do come, 
complete restitution-periods ; they are rather the occasional 
showers of blessing sent to invigorate the strength and cheer 
the hearts of faithful laborers before the final harvest. That 



APPENDIX. 609 

harvest is a nobler thing ; not something sent from the Lord 
merely, bift the sending of the Lord himself; not a present 
refreshment, but an ultimate and universal restitution ; a resti- 
tution which has been spoken of not by the peculiar prophets of 
Israel alone, but by all prophetic men from the foundation of the 
world. Such a restitution and so spoken of must transcend 
everything local and temporary ; it can be nothing less than that 
bringing back of all to the order and perfection of God which 
from the first has been the great purpose of divine grace, and the 
hope it has awakened in the heart of faith. Formally this resti- 
tution comprises the whole burden of j)rophecy, but not really, 
for the bringing back to what was carries in its train an indefi- 
nite elevation. It involves the rise of all to another and higher 
sphere of being, for he who stands at the head of it is the Lord 
from heaven, and while he restores he at the same time refines 
and glorifies. Why should not this thought also be extended to 
the other expectation, and determine what should be understood 
by the restoration of the kingdom to Israel ? This restoration 
too may still be spoken of; but if so, it should be as connected 
with a glorious elevation. In Christ David's throne has become 
allied with Godhead, and the kingdom assumes of n£cessity a far 
loftier position and embraces an immensely wider domain. It 
becomes indeed coextensive with the world, and hence the two 
points, when rightly understood, coalesce; the final readjusting 
and ordering of the afiairs of Christ's divine government shall be 
at once the restoration of the kingdom to Israel, and the restitu- 
tion of all things to the world. Hence also what in the prophets 
generally, who spoke in the midst of Israel, and from the Israel- 
itish point of view, is predicted under the aspect of the full and 
perfect re-establishment of David's kingdom, appears in Daniel, 
who by his position was led to contemplate the matter in its 
broader relationship to the world at large, as the setting up of 
the kingdom of heaven in the hands of one like a Son of man. 
They are but different modes of exhibiting the same great trutli, 
intimating that the kingdom, which belongs to Christ as Son of 
man, or Son of David, when conducted to its final issues, shall 
bring along with it the restitution of everything on earth to 
perfect order and blessedness. 



510 APPENDIX. 

APPENDIX K, Page 272. 

WHO ARE THE SAINTS THAT, IN DANIEL. VII, 18-22, ARE SAID TO 

POSSESS THE KINGDOM. 

The representation given in the text of Daniel's \dsion proceeds 
on the assumption, that in the kingdom of Messiah, as there dis- 
closed, there is no distinction of tribes and races, and that its sub- 
jects are simply the righteous as opposed to the wicked, " the saints 
of the Most High," The words themselves andthe whole charac- 
ter of the vision seem to make this plain enough. But interpret- 
ers with Jewish leanings cannot so view it ; the warping influence 
of their opinion as to the future ascendancy of Israel, induces them 
to impose on the passage a limitation of which there is no trace 
in the passage itself. Their literalism is exchanged here for the 
most unwarranted license, and the saints of the Most High shrink 
into merely " the people of Israel." Thus Auberlen, in his work 
on Daniel and the Apocalypse, writing of this vision, says at page 
219 : "By the people of the saints of the Most High, to whom the 
dominion is to be given, Daniel could manifestly have understood 
only the people of Israel, as contradistinguished from the king- 
doms and peoples of heathendom, who up to this time are to reign ; 
so that we also with exegetical right and propriety can think of 
nothing else, therefore not immediately of the Church." Here, in 
the first place, we have a groundless assumption — that Daniel 
could only understand by the expression, the people of Israel. 
What Daniel understood is not stated, nor generally are we 
informed of the prophets how far their insight carried them into 
the real import of the visions given them. It, no doubt, differed 
in one prophet as compared with another ; and also in the same 
prophet with respect to different parts of the communications he 
received. Of them, therefore, as of the ancient believers generally, 
it cannot be said with certainty, in any particular case, how far 
precisely they understood the meaning of their predictions. But, 
secondly, whatever their understanding might be — if Daniel, here, 
for example, understood by the saints of the Most High simply 
the Jewish people, that is no reason why we should hold such to 
be what was properly meant. We are no more obliged or war- 
ranted in such a case to abide by his understanding, than we 
ought to abide by the partial and mistaken senses which the apos- 



APPENDIX. 511 

ties often put upon our Lord's words up till the day of Pentecost. 
The words are not so properly the words of Daniel as those of the 
Spirit of God, and to ascribe to them a certain sense, different 
from what they naturally bear, as not only that put on them by 
him, but, because so put, their only valid and proper sense, is 
to embrace the old rationalistic principle, which treated the pro- 
phetical writings as simply the productions of men, incapable of 
bearing any other or higher sense than the men themselves fully 
understood. Such a principle is utterly at variance with the prop- 
er inspiration of prophecy, and with the real circumstances of the 
prophets of the Old Testament. In regard to the things which 
were given them to make known concerning the Christian dispen- 
sation, they themselves saw through a glass darkly ; they had con- 
sequently to search, as St. Peter tells us, (chap, i, 11,) what in cer- 
tain respects the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify. 
The very search implied a measure of darkness in the prediction, 
and of ignorance in the prophet ; and in regard to the opinion 
itself, to which this search in any particular case conducted, we 
have in the first place no certain means of knowing what it was, 
and in the second, even if we knew it, we should not be bound to 
abide by it ; the judgment of the prophet, as Horsley has justly 
said, " must still bow down to time as a more informed expositor." 
This holds particularly in respect to such a prophecy as the one 
now before us, in which Daniel merely reports what he saw in 
vision and heard in a dream. Neither the matter nor the words 
of the prophecy are in any proper sense his own ; not his own, 
that is, as to the ultimate meaning and intention of them. They 
were his only in so far as they accurately described what he saw 
and heard ; but for all that this pointed to, and required for its 
proper realization, Daniel was merely on a footing with other be- 
lievers, and far less favorably situated for understanding it than 
believers now are. The very absence of any peculiar reference to 
Israel in the words of the prophecy is strong evidence that none 
was intended. 



512 APPENDIX, 



APPENDIX L, Page 361. 

THE TENDENCY OF PROPHECY TO DESCEIBE THINGS ACCORDING TO 
THE REALITY RATHER THAN THE APPEARANCE OR PROFESSION. 

The interpretation which has been given in the text, of the 
strongest terms in the apostle's language respecting the antichrist, 
by understanding them of a virtual, in contradistinction to a 
formal and avowed, assumption of blasphemous prerogatives, is 
so much in accordance with the general style of prophecy, and so 
plainly demanded by the connection, that we cannot refrain from 
expressing our wonder at finding interpreters of note still press- 
ing the opposite view. Their doing so must be regarded, as an- 
other instance of that tendency to literalism which has wrought 
such confusion in the prophetical field, and which at particular 
points returns upon some who in general have attained to a cor- 
rect discernment of the characteristics of prophecy. The practice 
of describing things by their real as opposed to their professed or 
apparent character, is one that peculiarly distinguishes the apoca- 
lyptic imagery. Thus the worldly kingdoms, both in Daniel and 
the Revelation, are represented as beasts ; not that they actually 
were or gave themselves out to be such, but because they pursued 
a course which partook largely of the bestial nature ; they were, 
one might say, virtual beasts. And the false, seductive power 
designated Babylon, the mother of harlots and abominations, we 
may be sure was not going to proclaim her own shame by declar- 
ing herself to be what those epithets import. Beyond all doubt, 
she is described according to what she really was, not by what 
she would profess to be. In like manner the " name of blasphemy" 
on the heads of the beast indicates a real rather than a professed 
dishonor to the God of heaven ; for open profanity and avowed 
atheism have, with few exceptions, been studiously avoided by 
the worldly power. It has almost uniformly striven to associate 
with its different forms of government and political aims the 
name and sanctions of religion. Even in the more prosaic parts 
of the Apocalypse we find the same characteristic prevailing : as 
when it describes the soaring spirit of the Gnostic teachers, by 
their knowing the depths of Satan, (not those of God, which they 
themselves rather affected to understand,) and designates them 



APPENDIX. • 513 

by such epithets as Nicolaitans, (people-destroyers,) followers of 
Balaam, Jezebels ; which they were so far from professing to be, 
that they laid claims to the highest gifts and the most honorable 
distinctions. Nor could it be otherwise with the wolves of whose 
coming St. Paul warned the Ephesian elders, (Acts xx ;) they 
were not going, when they appeared, to avow their own wolf-like 
character, but would doubtless aspire to the place of guides and 
shepherds of the iiock. All prophecy, indeed, abounds with ex- 
amples of this mode of representation ; for, speaking as with 
divine intuition, it ever delights to penetrate through showy ap- 
pearances, and to strip deceivers of their false disguises. Thus 
the self-deifying pride of the Chaldean conquerors has its repre- 
sentation in the prophet Habakkuk, by their being characterized 
as successful fishers, sacrificing to their own net, (chap, i, 16 ;) and 
the corruption of degenerate Israel is exhibited with singular bold- 
ness by Ezekiel, under the form of their having had an Amorite 
father and a Hittite mother, (chap, xvi, 3 ;) and by Isaiah, under 
the announcement, as from themselves, that they had made a cov- 
enant with death, and come to an agreement with hell. (Chap- 
ter xxviii, 15.) By a still bolder figure the prophet Amos calls 
the tabernacle in the wilderness the tabernacle of their Moloch, 
because the idolatrous and unsanctified spirit which still clung to 
them rendered it practically an idol-tent rather than that of the 
true God. (Chap, v, 26.) These and many similar representa- 
tions are obviously designed to set before us the real state 
and character of the parties described, though entirely differ- 
ent from the outward profession and appearance. On any other 
principle it were impossible to render much that is written in 
prophecy either intelligible in itself or consistent with the facts 
of history. 

The violation of this principle in regard to the passages which 
treat of the antichristian apostasy, by adhering to a mistaken lit- 
eralism, is the more to be regretted, as it is doing with this por- 
tion of the prophetic Scriptures what it has already done with 
those which have respect to the promised Messiah — it is alto- 
gether destroying in the hands of its abettors their apologetic 
value. As, with the one class of predictions, Jewish Rabbis find 
themselves backed by Christian literalists in denying the fulfill- 
ment of some of the clearest prophetic intimations in the history 
of Jesus of Nazareth, so Romish controversialists are sheltering 

33 



514: ' APPENDIX. 

fhemselves under the wing of Protestant interpreters of the same 
school, in rebutting the application of the scriptural antichrist to 
Popery. Thus, in a small volume recently published on " The 
End of the World, or the Seepnd Coming of our Lord and Saviour 
Jesus Christ, by the Yery Rev. John Baptist Pagani," a very 
adroit use is made of the name of the late Mr. Faber. An aston- 
ishment is first expressed that any intelligent person could ever 
have thought of identifying the Pope of Rome with the antichrist 
of Scripture, especially that this could be done in so enlightened 
a country as England ; and then a passage from Mr. Faber's " Cal- 
endar of Prophecy" is quoted to show how a sensible Protestant 
writer exposes the absurdity of the idea. In the passage referred 
to, the argument is thrown into what is considered both by Mr. 
Faber and by his Catholic admirer a conclusive syllogism. " I 
shall throw my argument," Mr. Faber says, "into the form of a 
syllogism, and if any person be able to confute me, I shall be 
very ready to own myself mistaken. According to St. John, he 
who denies the Father and the Son, this is the antichrist. The 
line of the Roman Pontiffs did not deny the Father or the Son ; 
therefore the line of the Roman Pontiffs is not the antichrist." 
Embracing with satisfaction this triumphant syllogism, Mr. 
Pagani proceeds to give it additional strength by affirming that 
so far from denying the Father and the Son, the Roman Pontiffs 
have always maintained the doctrine of the Trinity against 
Deists, Sabellians, Unitarians, and other heretics ; that they have 
uniformly held that Christ has come in the flesh ; that they have 
also been remarkably distinguished for their humility, taking for 
their ordinary title, " unworthy ministers of Christ," " servants of 
the servants of God," whereas antichrist is to exalt himself above 
all that is called God. P. 41, seq. 

One might go through a considerable portion of prophecy with 
this sort of syllogism, and ask in vain for anything in the trans- 
actions of real life that would answer to the terms of the predic- 
tions. What, on such a style of interpretation, could be made of 
the passages to which we have been adverting ? Must we sus- 
pend the veracity of one prophet on the question, whether the 
proud Chaldeans actually hung up a net in some temple and did 
sacrifice to it ? Or that of another on the similar question, 
whether the Israelites literally bore about during their long 
sojourn in the wilderness an idolatrous tabernacle in impious 



APPENDIX. 515 

rivalry to that of Jehovah?* Or must we have credible testi- 
mony to the fact that the great worldly monarchies, as they suc- 
cessively arose, did each proclaim their own beast-like and blas- 
phemous character ? Or, finally, shall we hold that nothing can 
verify the description given of the mystic Babylon, which does 
not set itself openly to establish and avow the prostitution of all 
righteous principle ? If such be the kind of expectations with 
which we proceed to examine the prophetic word, we may cer- 
tainly lay our account to meet with few instances of fulfillment ; 
we know not where they are to be found in the past, and are 
afraid they shall in vain be looked for in the future. But surely 
if the apostle in his day knew persons in the Christian Church 
whom he could declare to be the " enemies of the cross of Christ," 
even while they were avowedly looking to that cross for salvation, 
the pontiffs of Rome might justly enough be characterized as de- 
nying the Father and the Son, if they should be found claiming 
prerogatives and upholding a system of error and delusion which 

* Even Hengstenberg has given too much countenance to this utterly groundless 
and extravagant idea, when, in discoursing upon this passage of Amos in the first 
volume of his work on the Pentateuch, he thus unfolds the general sense of the 
announcement: "The great mass of the people had for the larger part of the time 
during their march through the wilderness given up honoring the Lord by sacri- 
fices, and instead of Jehovah the God of hosts, had set up a spurious king of 
heaven, (the Egyptian Pan,) whom, with the rest of the host of heaven, they hon- 
ored with a spurious worship." It is against all probability that such an openly 
idolatrous worship as is here supposed should have been practiced by the mass of 
the Israelites during their stay in the wilderness. Occasional defections there no 
doubt were, but we have no reason to think more, at least nothing approaching 
to such a regular, systematic, and general idolatry. We are told even of the com- 
paratively smaller and isolated offenses of a public nature, such as the gathering 
of sticks on the Sabbath, and the blaspheming of God's name being capitally 
punished ; and can it be imagined that an idol tabernacle should have been 
allowed to be carried about and openly frequented ? Assuredly not. It is of the 
state of the heart, of its still unsanctified and idolatrous spirit, that the prophet 
speaks ; this practically turned Jehovah's tent and worship into the interest of 
heathenism ; in God's sight it belonged to Moloch rather than to himself. When 
thus viewed also there is no need, with Hengstenberg, of rendering "your king," 
instead of "your Moloch ;" indeed to do so rather obscures the meaning. The 
prophet is seeking to identify the idolatrous spirit of his own day with that of 
earlier times ; they were then going after Moloch ; and so, says the prophet, you 
have always been substantially doing. You did so through your forefathers in 
the wilderness ; even then you bore the tabernacle of your Moloch, and sacrificed 
to strange gods, and the old doom must return upon you. It is, therefore, the 
later form of idolatry which is used to characterize the earlier not (as Ilengstcng- 
berg would have it) the earlier the later. 



516 APPENDIX. 

virtually subvert the revelation given of the Father and the Son 
in Scripture. Let it just be granted that in the descriptions of 
the collective antichrist the apostles had their eye on the reali- 
ties, not on the mere appearances of things — no very extravagant 
postulate surely — then the proper syllogism will stand thus : the 
antichrist, according to St. John, is he who denies the Father 
and the Son ; but the line of the Roman pontiffs, by their own 
blasphemous assumptions, and by their system of legalized false- 
hood and cormption, utterly opposed to the spirit and design of 
the Gospel, have denied what is revealed of the Father and the 
Son ; therefore the line of the Roman pontiffs is antichrist. This 
we take to be a truer form of syllogism than !Mr. Faber's. But 
it only meets one fallacy involved in the interpretation. There 
is another, in its taking for granted that the representations in 
John's epistles are to be regarded as comprehensive of all that 
was to characterize the spirit and conduct of the antichrist. He 
merely points to one of the first forms and manifestations of the 
evil, that which took shape under the hands of the Gnostic 
teachers. By and by this was to lead on to others, of which not 
less distinct intimation was given elsewhere in the 'New Testa- 
ment writings. The antichristian spirit was to assume different 
phases, according to the peculiar influences of the time and the 
changing fortunes of the Church. But they were all to have one 
thing in common : under a profession of Christianity there was 
to be something in doctrine or practice which in effect made void 
the Christian tnith and life. This in every form was to be the 
characteristic of antichristianism as contradistinguished from 
atheism, heathenism, or undisguised worldliness. And hence, so 
far from expecting that the popes, or any other embodiments of 
the antichrist, should formally assume what is predicted of this 
power, we should rather expect the reverse. We should expect 
a studious effort to disguise the truth of the case, though such a 
one as should only impose upon the ignorant or the corrupt. 
And precisely as the servant of servants can in lordly arrogance 
place his foot upon the necks of princes, and claim the ascendency 
over all earthly power and authority, so, under a boastful procla- 
mation of the doctrine of the trinity, and the conversion of the 
cross into a magic charm, may there be found the most substan- 
tial denial of the Father and the Son. In a word, the question is 
not what popery pretends to be, but what it reallj/ is ; with this 



APPENDIX. 517 

alone we have to do in determining its relation to the prophetic 
delineations of Scripture. And when the subject is viewed in 
this light, he must* be strangely blinded or unhappily biased 
who fails to perceive this striking correspondence between the 
one and the other. 



APPENDIX M, Page 411. 

EUPHEATES AS A SYMBOL 11^ THE PROPHETICAL BOOKS. " 

It may justly be deemed strange that any one in the least con- 
versant with the style of prophecy should have failed to under- 
stand the proper nature of the allusion to the river Euphrates in 
Rev. xvi, 12, and especially that so many interpreters of the 
Apocalypse should be able to see nothing in it beyond the natural 
river, or the Turkish power, which now happens to have com- 
mand over the regions around it. For the ancient prophets have 
here furnished the key to the interpretation in the most natural 
and intelligible manner : this I have exhibited elsewhere, (" Im- 
perial Bible Diet.," Art. Euphrates^ and shall here do little more 
than adopt the language there employed. Contributing so ma- 
terially, as the river Euphrates did, to the resources and wealth 
of Babylon, it came naturally to be taken for an emblem or rep- 
resentative of the city itself, and of the empire of which it was 
the capital. In this respect a striking application was made of it 
by the prophet Isaiah, chap, viii, 5-8, where the little kingdom of 
Judah, with its circumscribed territory and its few earthly re- 
sources on the one hand, is seen imaged in the tiny brook of 
Shiloah ; while on the other, the rising power of Babylon is 
spoken of under the emblem of " the waters of the river, strong 
and many, even the king of Assyria and all his glory." And he 
goes on to expose the folly of Israel's trusting in this foreign 
power on account of its material greatness, by declaring that in 
consequence of this mistaken trust, and in chastisement of it, the 
mighty stream would as it were desert its proper channel, and 
turn its waters in a desolating flood over the Holy Land. In like 
manner the symbolical action of Jeremiah, (xiii, 4,) going to hide 
his girdle in a cavern by the river Euphrates, points to the evil 
that was destined to come upon the covenant-people from the 



518 APPEKDIX. 

power which had its representation in that river. But when 
Babylon's own doom conies to be the theme of prophetic dis- 
course, then quite naturally, and by a simple reversing of the 
figure, the waters of the river are spoken of as suffering under 
drought, yea, of being dried up, (Jer. 1, 38 ; Zech. x, 11,) although 
one should no more in this case think of a decay of the natural 
stream than in the other of its overflow ; in both cases alike it is 
the kingdom or power imaged by the river, which is really the 
subject of discourse. Now when we pass to New Testament 
prophecy, and find there again a Babylon and a Euphrates, the 
objects they represent must stand in the same relation to each 
other that the Babylon and Euphrates of former times did ; there- 
fore not simply diverse powers, but powers mutually intercon- 
nected, the one sustained as it were and fed by the other. 
Neither the literal Euphrates nor the Turkish power ever stood 
in such a relation to the mystic Babylon ; the relation of the two 
powers has rather been one of antagonism than of co-operation 
and support. The only thing answering to the description is 
what the Apocalypse itself indicates: "the peoples, and multi- 
tudes, and nations, and tongues " from which the antichristian 
power has ever drawn her supplies of strength. Hence, as in the 
case of the literal Babylon, the drying up of the waters of the 
Euphrates signified in prophetical language the diminution or 
failure of the city's resources, so the same expression, when 
applied to modern relations, can be fitly understood of nothing 
but a similar diminution or failure of the support which mystical 
Babylon was to derive from the nations and kingdoms of the 
earth. 



INDEX. 



♦♦♦ 

Pagr« 

Abraham's seed, what such, as regards the promises of God 61 

the promise to him the type of many future promises 188 

why called the heir of the world 265 

Alexander, Dr. , on Isaiah 125 

Andreas, his Commentary on the Apocalypse 310 

Antichrist, the typical, in Daniel 338 

the antitypical in Daniel 341 

as described by the apostles 344 

how far to be identified with false prophets and teachers 345 

connected with the apostacy 354-357 

Komish view of 356 

cannot be identified with infidelity or atheism 358 

the Church his proper sphere 361 

the difference between the typical and the antitypical 361 

exemplified in Eomanism 363, 512 

Antiochus Epiphanes, his character and proceedings 340 

his relation to the antichrist 360 

Apocalyptists, what peculiar to them 132 

Apocalypse, the only book of the New Testament given by vision 142 

the ground of its poetical character 143 

often misinterpreted by confounding symbol and reality 153 

connection between and Daniel ^ 305 

its general purport and design 393 

Apologetic value of prophecy 205 

Armageddon, battle of 423 

Arnold on the prophecies respecting ancient kingdoms 67 

his view of prophecy in relation to history 96 

Auberlen, his view of the metals in Daniel's vision 291 

also of the seven heads of the beast in Eevelation 311 

also of the Lamb-horned beast 333 

on the whore 378 

on Hengstenberg's view of the millennium 432 

Augustine, his view of the antichrist 354, 355 

Babylon, doom of, in prophecy 214 

mystic, nature of her doom 387 

Babylonian empire, why represented under the image of a lion 299 

Bacon, one of his axioms 148 

Balaam, his case and character 486 

his prophecies mainly given for the covenant-people 55 

Bar-jesus, his character as a false prophet 845 

Barnabas, why so called 57 

Beast's heart, what meant by 299 

Beasts, why used as emblems of worldly kingdoms 298 

Beast of Apocalypse, why with seven heads and ten horns 807 

the healing of its deadly wound. 826 



^^^^^ INDEX. ^^^^^Hi^^HH 

Beast, overcoming the woman's seed ^^^^. 327 

number of his name 429 

his destruction 449 

Bethel, case of the old prophet at 488 

Birks, Mr,, his vie'vr of the Jewish ordinances in the Christian Church 257 

Bolingbroke's objection to the e\'idence of prophecy 110 

Book with seven seals, its symbolical import 394 

Book given to St. John to eat, why called little 414 

Brass, how emblematic of the Grecian empire ' 292 

Caiaphas, his peculiar case as a prophet 486 

Canaan, its typical character 265-269 

Caspari on Obadiah 202 

Christ, his pre-eminence as a prophet 23-26 

his teaching superior to that of Moses and the prophets 245 

in what sense like to Moses 25, 485 

nothing in his teaching on the restoration of the Jews 245-254 

his relations as to the flesh made of no account in his kingdom 261 

the relation of his Church and kingdom to the kingdoms of this world. . . . 286 

why he so commonly designated himself the Son of man 313 

Chrysostom's view of antichrist 357 

Church, essential oneness of, in all times 64 

Coleridge's remark on the prophetical element in Burke's works 41 

Coming of the Lord, how exhibited in the Psalms and prophets 434 

distinction between real and figurative often improper 437 

how represented in Christ's discourses 439 

its relation to the millennium 464 

Convulsions in nature, how to be understood in prophetic representations 157 

Cyprian, his view of the antichrist 352 

Damascenus, his view of the antichrist 352 

Daniel, his history typical. 48 

his explanation of Nebuchadnezzar's vision of the great image 290 

his vision of the five monarchies 298 

the historical character of some of his prophecies 114-117 

David, the prophetic school originated by him 38 

his history typical 48 

prophecies respecting hia kingdom, how far conditional 75 

Davison on prophecy 198 

on the antichrist 363 

Delitzsch on Habakkuk 171, 202 

on prophecy 44 

on references by prophets to each other's writings 203 

Douglas of Cavers on prophecy — 66, 101 

Dragon, its symbolical connection with the world and Satan 319 

hostility to the woman's son 819 

Earth, what meant by its helping the woman 324 

Edomites, prophecies respecting 213, 221 

Egypt, doom of, in prophecy 216 

what spiritually so called 368 

Eli, the prophecy on his house conditional 90 

Elijah, his character as a prophet. 87 

character of his times, explaining the singular explicitness of his prophecies. 112 

Enoch's prophecy regarding the Lord's coming for judgment 435 

Euphrates, its s-ymbolical import 410, 518 



INDEX. 521 

Page 

Euphrates, what meant by the binding of the angels in 411, 412 

what by its drying up 421 

Ewald on the style of prophecy 134, 138 

Palling, its symbolical import 152, 321 

Fathers, their jealousy respecting the ecstatic state of the prophets 119 

their views of the antichrist ; 352 

also of the restoration of the Jews 264 

Figurative representations, why so much used in prophecy 145 

Floods sent after the woman by the dragon, of what symbolical 823 

Foxton, his view of prophecy 97, 217 

Gcd's purposes in behalf of men, their absolute nature 74 

God, the unchangeableness of his character and his changes of procedure 83 

in what sense said to repent 85 

Gog and Magog, their war against the saints 472 

Gold, how an emblem of the Babylonian empire 292 

Grecian empire, why represented under the image of a leopard 800 

Hegesippus, his view of the antichrist 349 

Hengstenberg, his view of the absolute character of prophecy 72 

his remarks on the historical character of Daniel's prophecies 116 

his view of the antichrist 356 

his view of the whore 371 

his view of the millennium 432 

History, Sacred, the prophetical element in it 40-53 

Historical element in prophecy 110 

Hofmann, his view of the seven heads of the beast 310 

Horn, the little, in Daniel .' 341 

Horsley, Bishop, on Hosea's marriage 125 

on the two advents 176 

on Seneca's prophecy 208 

on the Lord's coming 442 

Hosea's marriage not real 127 

Hurd, Bishop, his views on the figurative language of prophecy 146 

Imaginative faculty, how exercised in prophetical revelations 136 

Incense, its symbolical import 407 

Inhabiters of the earth, who meant by in Kevelation 409 

Iron, how emblematic of ancient Kome 293 

Irving on the first promise 187 

on the two dispensations 164 

Israel, the sealed company from among, in Revelation, how to be understood. . 251 

Jeremiah, his principle of prophetical interpretation 86 

Jerusalem, the earthly, ceased in Gospel times to be the center of God's kingdom 279 

fulfillment of Christ's prophecy concerning it 239 

Jewish people, peculiarity of their position after the return from Babylon 115 

prophecies on their past history 227 

the prophetical future of 242-285 

their religious calling and privileges their sole distinction in former times. 262 

the good to be expected from their general conversion 263 

their distinction of families gone 280 

Jonah, his prophecy on Nineveh conditional 78, 83 

his defective holiness 487 

Joshua the priest, why specially taken as a type of Christ by Zechariah 194 



522 IXDEX. 

Page 

Kimehi on prophecy 105 

Kingdom of heaven, why Christ's kingdom so called 313 

Kings of the East, what meant by 421 

Lamb, why the seven-sealed book opened by Christ in that character 394 

Lamb-homed beast, of what symbolical 328 

Law, its prophetic symbols verified in Christ 233 

Levi and Simeon, Jacob's prediction upon them 87 

Literal style of prophetical interpretation 94 

not justified by past fulfillments of prophecy 93 

at variance with a proper prophetical harmony 107 

would leave much of Christ's earthly course unaccomplished 109 

essentially Jewish 109 

fails in predictions on Edom 221 

fails also in Messianic prophecies 235 

Living creatures in the Apocalypse, why represented as calling out at the open- 
ing of the first four seals 404 

Locusts in Joel, of what symbolical 154 

Lowth, Bishop, on Hebrew poetry 137 

Magi, what sort of characters 345 

Maimonides, on the peculiar dignity of Moses 24 

his views on prophetical actions 125 

Martyrs, living and reigning with Christ 457 

Messiah, his appearance at both advents, partly for judgment 177 

prophecies respecting 230 

Messiahs, false, who to be reckoned such 344, 348 

Michael, whether the same as Christ 321 

Miracles and prophecy not simply evidences 68 

Moon, of what symbolical 318 

Moral element in prophecy predominant 66, 275 

its predominance in Scripture generally 92 

Moses, his pre-eminence as a prophet 21, 25 

Mountains, of what symbolical 493 

Mountain of the Lord's house 104 

Mystery, what it implies in reference to Babylon 372 

of iniqmty 354, 355 

Natural the basis of the supernatural 121 

Nazarites, their relation to prophets 49 

New Testament Scripture, why less poetical than the Old 143 

clearer in its announcements 162, 245 

economy of, carries all to a higher elevation 173 

Nineveh, Jonah's prophecy against 73 

Numbers in the Apocalypse, how to be understood 426 

CEJcumenius, his view of the antichrist 352 

Old Testament form often employed for expressing gospel ideas 170 

Old Testament history often moulded to suit the ends of prophecy 192 

Old Testament relations preserved in prophetical intimations 194 

Owen, his views on the connection between the Old and New Testament Church 64 

Parables, prophetical mistakes often made in interpreting them 396 

Parker, Theodore, his views on prophecy 97, 218 

Paul, St., his teaching on Jewish observances 249, 256 

Peter, St., his speeches on the day of Pentecost and after 250 

Plagues, the last, why the seven vials so called 418 



INDEX. 523 

Page 

Poetical element in prophecy 133 

why less in New than Old Testament Scripture 143 

its existence even in historical delineations 159 

Priestly office, its singular elevation after the return from Babylon 193 

Prophet, meaning of the Hebrew word for 481 

his proper calling and work 19 

Prophets of the world, who chiefly regarded as such 22 

false, in apostolic age 345 

Prophetical actions usually ideal 124 

rule for distinguishing between real and ideal 130 

writings, references from one to another 198 

Prophecy, its connection with history 34r-43 

its gradual and growing character 35 

rises above history 44 

its proper sphere 55 

why given so irregularly 58 

why it often gives promises in the form of threatenings 69 

its promises only for believers 59 

its denunciations against kingdoms 67, 211 

• evil' of regarding it as merely an evidence of revelation 68 

its relation to human freedom and behavior 70 

conditional when bearing on men's responsibilities and duties 81 

uttered from a human point of view 84 

its style and diction viewed negatively 93 

its frequent personifications 139 

its tendency to exhibit events as present 176 

its interconnected and progressive character 186 

its use of the past in announcing the future 271 

Psalms, representation of God in the 434 

Kesurrection, the first, what meant by 461 

Eoman empire, why represented under the image of iron 293 

— — why by a nameless monster 300 

Komish Church, its relation to the antichrist 363, 514 

its relation to Babylon 372 

Saints of the Most High, their power to execute judgment 305 

in what sense dominion given to them 450 

not to be confined to the Jews 250 

Samson, the riddle of his life 49 

Samuel, the character of prophecy in his age 37 

Satan, what symbolized by his being cast down from heaven 320 

what by his being bound and shut up in prison 452 

Schleiermacher, his views on prophecy 96 

Schools of the prophets 87 

Sea, of what symbolical 299 

Sealing vision in Apocalypse 405, 413 

Seals, action of, explained 395, 399 

Seer, why disused in later times 482 

Seneca's prophecy of future maritime discoveries 207 

Serpent, meaning of bruising his head 99 

Seven, regard had to, in Revelation 810 

Seventy years captivity really accomplished 181 

Silver, how emblematic of the Medo-Persian empire 292 

Smith of Cambridge on prophecy 118, 129 

Sodom, what spiritually so called 868 



524 INDEX. 

Page 

Son of man, why taken as the representation of the divine kingdom 311 

why all judgment ascribed to 314 

why this name so much appropriated by Christ 313 

Stanley's Sinai and Palestine 223, 424 

Stars, their symbolical import 318 

Star, fallen, its symbolical import 409 

Stone, how emblematical of the divine kingdom 294 

Subjective state of the prophets, its influence on the form of their prophecies. . . 157 

Sun, its symbolical import 317 

Supernatural in revelation always based on the natural 121 

Symbols in prophecy as derived from the natural world 149 

their broader aspects only to be contemplated 150 

uniformity required in interpreting them 151 

as derived from sacred history 160 

Teachers, false, in New Testament times, corresponding to false prophets in Old 347 

Temple, what symbolized by, in the Epistle to the Thessalonians 361 

what in Eevelation i . 366 

Theophanies of the Old Testament, the prophetical element in them 46 

Threatenings in prophecy, why more palpably fulfilled than promises 62 

Time, relative disregard of, in prophecy 176 

sometimes made more specific 183 

its comparative concealment in regard to future events a fixed point 180 

the wisdom of such concealment 184 

Trench, his view of the antichrist 353, 358 

Trumpets in Eevelation, their general import and design 406 

connection of, with the vial 400 

Type, combination of, with prophecy 102 

its service in enabling prophecy to be fuller of particulars 174 

Typical prophecies, how fulfilled 170 

character of the Jewish religion in its bearing on the future 255 

of the Jewish people 259 

of the land of Canaan 265 

Tyre, doom of, in prophecy 215 

taking of by Nebuchadnezzar 219 

Vettius Valens, his prophecy regarding Eome 207 

Vials, connection between them and the trumpets in Eevelation 400 

their proper import and design 418 

Vine of the earth, what symbolized by 417 

Warburton, his views on the figurative language of prophecy 145 

his distinction between history and prophecy in interpretations 354 

"Whore, what meant by, in Eevelation 371 

how far found in Popery 376 

how far in Protestant states 377 

what meant by the kingdoms of the world hating her 384 

of what nature are the judgments to be inflicted on her 387 

Wilderness, what meant by, as the retreat for the woman 322 

Woe-trumpets, why so called 409 

Woman, why used in Eevelation as a symbol of the Church 317, 370 

Worldly kingdoms, why represented under the emblem of wild beasts 298 

World's science and learning, its rivalry to the truth of God 832 

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